SBHS earth science teacher Jim Ostdick spent his time off
cleaning up trash at local beaches
By Jim Ostdick
Special to the Pinnacle
I didn’t set out to collect a thousand pounds of trash from the
beach this summer. There was still a lot of snow on the Sierra
Nevada trails in June, so I decided I would satisfy my walking
Jones by making frequent trips to Moss Landing and pounding the
sand instead. I ended up going to the beach 35 times from June 8 to
Aug. 8. Along the way, disgust became duty, duty became compulsion,
and compulsion became mission. Slowly, I found that my summertime
business was picking up.
SBHS earth science teacher Jim Ostdick spent his time off cleaning up trash at local beaches
By Jim Ostdick
Special to the Pinnacle
I didn’t set out to collect a thousand pounds of trash from the beach this summer. There was still a lot of snow on the Sierra Nevada trails in June, so I decided I would satisfy my walking Jones by making frequent trips to Moss Landing and pounding the sand instead. I ended up going to the beach 35 times from June 8 to Aug. 8. Along the way, disgust became duty, duty became compulsion, and compulsion became mission. Slowly, I found that my summertime business was picking up.
This latest trash obsession of mine started on a foggy June-gloom morning when I got out of my truck and snagged a plastic grocery bag blowing across the dirt parking lot at Salinas River State Beach. I shook my head at the carelessness it took for some lazy beach reveler not to use one of the trash cans at either end of the lot. Slob! Pack your trash home with you! I shoved the bag into my pocket and reminded myself that I was there to get some fresh air and exercise, not silently chastise litterbugs. Silent or not, there was nobody else there but me.
So I chugged up and over the steep path through the dunes and there she was, fifty yards away – the mighty Pacific doing her restless dance with the sand and the kelp and the fish and the dolphins and the shells and the goofball gulls and pelicans. As much as I love the High Sierra and California’s iconic deserts and fertile inland valleys, it’s the Pacific coast that floats my boat. I like everything about it, but especially the wind-sculpted dunes and the breakers crashing smoothly on the shore. And on mornings like this one – cool, breezy, and overcast, perfect weather for walking – I was in my element. I like to jog and walk along the newly wet sand where the spent end of a wave nudges a narrow, serpentine swath of seaweed, shells, and pebbles back and forth in an ever-changing, undulating, captivating conga line. I can follow it for hours panting like a love struck coyote.
This massive sea, so rich in life, so crucial to life, so rhythmic, so soothing, so spectacularly powerful, so special it can be seen from the Moon and beyond, commands respect. So imagine my disgust that first socked-in morning, making soon-to-be-erased footprints along the rippling tide line, when I encountered a pink Disney Princess metal-coated balloon tied to a curly purple ribbon all wrapped up in a magnificently slimy green lump of Monterey Bay kelp. Sheesh! I stomped on Her Cute Little Royal Pinkness, squeezed the stale air from the Mylar, yanked the ribbon out of the slime, and put my captured plastic grocery bag to good use – Exhibit A: item one of many. I didn’t know it then, but by Aug. 8, I would find and remove 197 balloons from the beaches between the Salinas River and the Pajaro River.
By the end of that day’s walk, I would fill the original plastic bag plus three more I found along the way with a startling assortment of plastic items misplaced on the beach by inexplicably weak or careless humans. I was moved by a sense of duty – to California – out of pride for the special land we call home, to my students out of integrity for all I have preached to them about resource conservation and responsibility, and to myself out of a certainty that this is one line I would not cross. I would not ignore this mess.
From then on, I brought trash grabbers and lawn bags and stuffed the bags with junk: food wrappers, Bic lighters, cigarette filters, straws, balloons and ribbons, water bottles, pop bottles, beer bottles, metallic bottle caps, aluminum cans, sox, T-shirts, men’s underwear, ladies’ underwear, dirty diapers, tampons, flip flops, tennis shoes, paper cups, potato chip bags, Doritos bags, bait containers, lures, line, hooks, floats, orange peels, watermelon rinds, I didn’t set out to collect a thousand pounds of trash from the beach this summer. There was still a lot of snow on the Sierra Nevada trails in June, so I decided I would satisfy my walking Jones by making frequent trips to Moss Landing and pounding the sand instead. I ended up going to the beach 35 times from June 8 to Aug. 8. Along the way, disgust became duty, duty became compulsion, and compulsion became mission. Slowly, I found that my summertime business was picking up.
This latest trash obsession of mine started on a foggy June-gloom morning when I got out of my truck and snagged a plastic grocery bag blowing across the dirt parking lot at Salinas River State Beach. I shook my head at the carelessness it took for some lazy beach reveler not to use one of the trash cans at either end of the lot. Slob! Pack your trash home with you! I shoved the bag into my pocket and reminded myself that I was there to get some fresh air and exercise, not silently chastise litterbugs. Silent or not, there was nobody else there but me.
So I chugged up and over the steep path through the dunes and there she was, fifty yards away – the mighty Pacific doing her restless dance with the sand and the kelp and the fish and the dolphins and the shells and the goofball gulls and pelicans. As much as I love the High Sierra and California’s iconic deserts and fertile inland valleys, it’s the Pacific coast that floats my boat. I like everything about it, but especially the wind-sculpted dunes and the breakers crashing smoothly on the shore. And on mornings like this one – cool, breezy, and overcast, perfect weather for walking – I was in my element. I like to jog and walk along the newly wet sand where the spent end of a wave nudges a narrow, serpentine swath of seaweed, shells, and pebbles back and forth in an ever-changing, undulating, captivating conga line. I can follow it for hours panting like a love struck coyote.
This massive sea, so rich in life, so crucial to life, so rhythmic, so soothing, so spectacularly powerful, so special it can be seen from the Moon and beyond, commands respect. So imagine my disgust that first socked-in morning, making soon-to-be-erased footprints along the rippling tide line, when I encountered a pink Disney Princess metal-coated balloon tied to a curly purple ribbon all wrapped up in a magnificently slimy green lump of Monterey Bay kelp. Sheesh! I stomped on Her Cute Little Royal Pinkness, squeezed the stale air from the Mylar, yanked the ribbon out of the slime, and put my captured plastic grocery bag to good use – Exhibit A: item one of many. I didn’t know it then, but by Aug. 8, I would find and remove 197 balloons from the beaches between the Salinas River and the Pajaro River.
By the end of that day’s walk, I would fill the original plastic bag plus three more I found along the way with a startling assortment of plastic items misplaced on the beach by inexplicably weak or careless humans. I was moved by a sense of duty – to California – out of pride for the special land we call home, to my students out of integrity for all I have preached to them about resource conservation and responsibility, and to myself out of a certainty that this is one line I would not cross. I would not ignore this mess.
From then on, I brought trash grabbers and lawn bags and stuffed the bags with junk: food wrappers, Bic lighters, cigarette filters, straws, balloons and ribbons, water bottles, pop bottles, beer bottles, metallic bottle caps, aluminum cans, sox, T-shirts, men’s underwear, ladies’ underwear, dirty diapers, tampons, flip flops, tennis shoes, paper cups, potato chip bags, Doritos bags, bait containers, lures, line, hooks, floats, orange peels, watermelon rinds, McDonald’s trash, Taco Bell trash, zip lock baggies of every size, Styrofoam cups, Styrofoam plates, plastic cutlery, ball caps, misshapen oddball pieces of boat flotsam, plastic Swisher Sweets cigar mouthpieces, Marlboro packages, spent shotgun shells, six-pack rings, frayed rope fragments, ear buds, ear plugs, sunglasses, toilet paper, toy buckets, toy shovels, fish toys, toy boats, sunscreen lotion bottles, dish detergent bottles, motor oil bottles, booze bottles, plastic flasks, plastic bats, plastic balls, golf balls, shoestrings, hair scrunchies, brushes, combs, whistles, light sabers, lightstix, batteries, mayonnaise packets, blow pop sticks, popsicle sticks, ice cream wrappers. You name it, I found it. By far the greatest culprit, though, the most littered object by number and by volume, was the ubiquitous plastic bottle cap. I collected easily a thousand of those, one by one, at the end of my handy, busy grabbers.
On the last day of my summertime mission, I made the short hike from Zmudowski State Beach north to the mouth of the Pajaro River during low tide. This is a magical place where thunderous waves crash into the ocean side of a long sandy spit and a line of elegant pelicans rest securely on the much calmer river side. When the Sun is shining, it is absolutely stunning, as the rippling, retreating river tidewaters run from the shining, relentless surf. As most of us know, this is the endpoint of the San Benito River, too, which empties into the Pajaro north of San Juan Bautista.
As I walked, I thought to myself that surely all the work the Outdoor Club has done over the years, removing over fifteen tons of garbage from the upstream riverbed, would contribute to making this place pretty clean. It is infrequently visited by anyone but fishermen and beachcombers like me. But I had never been there at low tide before and man, was I wrong! The side of the river was like a miniature landfill, lined with hundreds of old sneakers, bottles, broken glass and rusty spray paint cans. I hauled four bags full of junk that day and left many more behind.
Overall, I feel good about my thousand-pound summer. Picking up beach trash was a positively transforming experience. I’m healthy and strong in my 60th year and that’s a lot to be thankful for. And really, I didn’t mind doing the work. It needed to be done and I would much rather go to the beach any day than go to a gym. But I had a lot of time to wonder about people as I was walking and what I wondered the most about is what makes them litter. There is a disconnection between some people (a LOT of people) and the natural world that is not healthy. I personally wonder if it is a mental illness unique to our times. Whatever it is, you can help heal them. If you bothered to read all the way through this story, you probably care about the consequences of your actions. So act every day to influence those around you to clean up their act.
There are good times ahead. Everyone’s business is picking up.
Jim Ostdick is an earth science teacher at San Benito High School and the advisor of the Outdoor Club. He works with the students to conduct clean ups in the San Benito River several times a year.
