Acrylic on Trash found at the Rocky Mountain National Park (Beer bottle, bottle caps, baby bottle, shoe sole, plastic wrappers)
Grand Canyon Menu
North Rim of the Grand Canyon painted on a Lodge Menu.
Grand Canyon National Park
The Grand Canyon was our final National Park, and boy was it a marvelous grand finale! When I first approached the North Rim, I started tearing up at its beauty. I had never before experienced anything so huge. How could a canyon be so big that we were unable to see the bottom? The atmospheric perspective and change in colors that it provided. I was totally overwhelmed and totally in love. We ran down to the Bright Angel lookout point, and again did not find any substantial trash on the actual trail. However, when we came back to the Lodge and cabin area, we found tons of trash under stairs and bushes. A lot of it included plastic food containers from the nearby restaurants. We even found two menus from the Lodge.
Zion National Park
Our visit to Zion was one of the most memorable times of my life. We dedicated our entire day trekking down the Narrows Trail, which is basically a shallow river cut through a canyon. I had never quite experienced anything like it before. In the beating peak heat of the day we were completely cool wading through light teal waters and shielded from the sun because of the 2000 foot walls of orange rock on either side of us. My dad is not much of a hiker, but he said if he had to do one hike before he died, it would be the Narrows, and I completely agree. I already mapped the route from my new home in Santa Barbara to Zion, and it only takes seven hours!
To partake in the Narrows Trail, one had to be clad in some sort of rugged water shoes. A lot of people rented out these fancy waterproof hiking boots, but we didn't have the foresight to do that. I luckily was wearing my water sandals and my dad, only bringing flip flops, opted to take his shoes off all together. But no problems were had with this lack of proper footwear. The rocks we stepped on were all smoothed by years of the river flowing over them. It was interesting and fitting to find much of the trash to be bits and pieces of broken flip flops discarded as people smartened up to the barefoot method of traveling. Luckily most of these pieces of trash were not on the trail itself, but closer to the shuttle stops.
Arches National Park
We woke up at the crack of dawn to get to Arches National Park, just as the sun was peaking over the horizon. The low, warm light cascading upon the bright red and orange rock formations lit up the entire desert landscape. My dad and I found ourselves frantically running and driving from lookout to lookout to see as much beauty as we possibly could.
Our longest stop was at the end of the park loop where there was the double arch. Coming back from a small hike we met up with a park ranger who gave us a few trash bags to collect the potential trash with. We discussed the project and it was wonderfully reassuring to hear his enthusiasm and support for the idea.
Arches was one of the hottest places we visited so most of the trash we collected was water bottles. At least it was good to witness the fact that people were staying hydrated! As we drove to the next stop we found ourselves circling back to specific spots on multiple occasions in order to quickly grab discarded water bottles. It kind of felt like a treasure hunt. I had to constantly remind myself that I had to balance my time looking at the ground for trash and looking up to soak in the vast expanse of rock formations surrounding me.
Rocky Mountain National Park
This was our first stop on our cross country road trip. I was surprised how enthusiastic my dad and I got while collecting trash. We received a few comments from visitors thanking us as we bent over in parking lots near lookout spots to pick up smushed bottle caps or cigarette butts. It was interesting deciding when and where the line to retrieve trash was. The idea of this project is to help preserve the National Parks, not to harm them further. We saw a lot of substantial trash lying on edges of cliffs below that had hopefully been blown out of someones hand and not intentionally thrown. But we were out of reach to grab it ourselves and were not about to hop the fence and tumble down the mountain in order to pick up a water bottle. However, we did think about investing in an extendable claw, so if trash is just out of reach we would be able to retrieve it in the future.
At the Rocky Mountain National Park we found: bottle caps, cigarette butts, napkins, wrappers, a glass bottle, baby bottle, and the sole of a shoe.
Trash collected within the Rocky Mountain National Park
Acadia National Park, Mount Desert, ME
For this specific sculpture, I collected trash from around the rocks and ocean of Schoodic Point in Acadia National Park. Naturally, most of the trash I found was water-related: a few washed up buoys, crinkled up water bottles, frayed ropes, and plastic bags for fishing.
Acadia, Acrylic on Trash, 2016