Note: This is the latest in a series of articles by Utah Resident Gary Lee Parker, who writes of the outdoors and of Utah’s rich history.

I had just dried out from an accidental plunge in the chill waters of Ashley Creek. Autumn had set it’s teeth against the summer heat and I was grateful I hadn’t left my fleece home to save weight, as I’m often tempted to do.

My brother had finally stopped laughing at me, and had crossed the creek to a small clearing in the trees. Finally dressed in dry layers I looked up to find him crashing through the brush, busy at work with something, cursing under his breath.

I shouldered my daypack and crossed Ashley Creek on a sturdy log, then broke up the trail, curious as to what the fuss was all about.

Stepping out of the trees, I found him standing in the middle of the clearing folding a large blue tarp adorned by several tears and worn by at least a season in the weather. Nearby lay a pile of debris. Trash. And a lot of it.

I bent to take a look and found bottles, cans; even a hatchet, among other odds and ends.

Looks like my pack just got heavier.

The memory of that day floods back to me as I stand in the middle of Dave Everett driveway watching him dump several garbage bags full of other people’s refuse onto the hot concrete.

Dave is an avid camper, and keeps a trailer in eastern Uintas each summer, heading for the hills whenever his busy schedule permits. But today he’s disgusted by it all.

I look from the frustrated outdoorsman to the scattered pile of trash and wonder at the variety of its contents.

“I’ve probably got a half dozen pair of socks in there,” he grumbles.

And he’s right. There are at least that many, mixed among the beer cans, CO2 cartridges, rags, bottles, and unrecognizable masses of junk. There are even a couple of shoes strewn about, as well as an old metal fence post.

“This was all within an area maybe a quarter of a city block in size,” he says. He’s been slowly cleaning up the area near his camp trailer for the past few weeks, just doing a little each time he heads for the hills. “This is maybe only three hours of work, total.”

I remark that there are an awful lot of square miles of land up there. There must be a mountain of trash altogether.

He grumbles again as he dumps another bag of garbage onto the pile, something I don’t quite catch, but obviously understand. It’s a frustration I share.

I’ve probably packed hundreds of pounds of other people’s trash out of the back-country in my lifetime. I’ll probably pack hundreds more out before I’m done. And it won’t even make a dent.

It’s a puzzle to me. I can understand litter in the front-country. Many people travel through heavily used areas who aren’t necessarily appreciators of the natural world.

But the back-country — particularly the wilderness — is bewildering. And the sheer variety of things I’ve carried out from miles into the wildest country in the West over the years is astounding.

There have been jackets, spray paint cans, beer bottles, empty fuel canisters, aluminum foil, shoes, pants, underwear, and inner tubes. I’ve found foil nicotine gum wrappers, socks, sandals, hats, gloves, shirts, and tarps. Add the tube tents, stakes, matchbooks, and random dinnerware and you’ve got quite the eclectic collection of goods.

Of course the most common item I see regularly is empty beer cans, which is the most puzzling of all the items I’ve found. Each can was carried, full of beer, which weighs three quarters of a pound, probably on someone’s back, deep into the wilderness. The empty can weighs about a half an ounce.

This means someone was willing to carry three quarters of a pound in, but was unwilling to carry a mere half ounce back out.

Say again?

“It’s unbelievable,” says Dave.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I agree.

Then he tells me some of the crazy things that have happened to him over the years. Like the time he and a disabled friend spent a day cutting firewood for his camp, only to return to camp a few days later to find nearly all of the large pile of wood stolen.

“They left me enough for one fire,” he says.

It’s a matter of respect. Respect for each other, and respect for the land we use and claim to love.

“We’re all stewards of this land,” he says. “I wish people would just be considerate of the next person using the campsite.”

That goes for trails, wilderness, campgrounds, and the rest as well.

“You know, there are many people in this world who will never get to see anything like the Uinta Mountains,” he says. “And here we have them in our own backyard and we just often take them for granted.”

If we don’t like closures and restriction, I add, then we have to change this. An overly taxed Forest Service simply doesn’t have the resources to clean up our messes. Nor should they have to. So what’s a forest ranger to do? Restricting use is about the only option.

So what’s the solution?

Dave talks about organizing user groups to clean campgrounds twice per season. He says, as he kicks through the pile of rubble in his drive, that he thinks most people respect the land, and the bad apples are a small percentage of those who use public lands.

I say we have to change the attitudes of the few bad apples. But I don’t know quite how.