Spring is here, birds are chirping, doves are singing, owls are hooting and bees are buzzing. Flowers are blooming, grass is growing and leaves are budding. Snow has melted, now garbage is flying and the white rocks on the road are spreading.
What a transition from beautiful, serene and fascinating to dark, ugly, and utterly disgusting.
We live in West Milford; this is not a city where it would seem normal to see ripped bags of garbage spread haphazardly around. This is West Milford; we are one of the most popular towns in New Jersey for protected highlands, and yet this is what we see – garbage and rocks.
Want some advice from somebody who has lived away from the city their whole life? Ask some old time West Milford-ites and they will tell you what to do. On garbage day, use a bear can. Oh the bears still get in there? Yeah right. Screw it down harder. They still get in? Use a cable and a carabineer clip. The bears won’t get in and it will be just as easy for garbage men to open the containers.
When you go hiking in the woods, instead of coming out and telling everybody about how much junk you found in the woods, you should be telling people how much junk you found and picked up. It is sad how people treat the woods around here, but I don’t want to see junk around so I clean it up. Any other hikers ought to do the same, otherwise you are not a hiker; you are just as bad as the person dumping garbage. I call them sloppy wanderers.
On plastic or cardboard pickup day, it might be windy. Don’t just let your papers fly all over the neighborhood; it really leaves your neighbors with a bad impression. I am not as much of a tree hugger as this all may sound. I just respect the Earth around us, and we all should. I don’t want to walk into my back yard and see school papers or somebody’s leftover bacon wrappers. I don’t want to see hot water heaters or junk buckets from pool chemicals. I bought this house so I can walk out my back door and see woods and everything nature has to offer: sounds, sights, and smells.
When we taint the earth with junk, it really ruins it for everybody. The world would be pretty in more than just physical ways if we all kept the garbage in the garbage pail and out of the woods.
The bears are now out of their "deep sleep" with their young and are searching for food. Don’t feed the bears. Keep your garbage locked up, not only now but for the whole year. If people only knew how much feeding the bears intentionally or unintentionally ruins the eco system, they would make sure they did not do it.
Respect your neighbors. This goes for respecting the Earth as well.
This brings me to rocks. Why are white rocks all over town? We need a better example set by the town of West Milford if you expect your residents to protect Mother Nature. This is what the town spent their winter road maintenance budget on? I can say this with 100 percent certainty that it will not be argued by anybody in my area – don’t buy rocks again to put down on top of ice. It does not work and all it has done is caused physical damage to cars. The rocks fling up and chip paint off the cars. It has caused kids to slide on their bicycles and get hurt, it has caused people on motorcycle to get hurt. Enough is enough. Get those street sweepers out there, clean this junk up, and don’t use it again. Nobody wants it! It is all over everybody’s lawn. If these rocks are not cleaned up, I am sure there will be bad car or motorcycle incidences because of it. I ride a motorcycle and have almost gone down a few times because of it. These rocks are worse than ice because people expect ice to be slippery, people do not expect black top to be almost as slick because of tiny pebbles. Whose idea was it to use rocks for snow control anyway?
Kenneth J. Gallo Jr.
Hewitt