far from here at about sunset or sunrise. When the sun is to your front
and low in the sky it glints and sparkles off thousands of bottles
strewn along both sides of the highway. While I know that the glass is
litter, I find a certain beauty in the way these corridors of glass
wind and curve off into the distance.
Immediately beyond every highway sign are
concentrations of bottles that have been thrown at the signs.
Obviously, most bottles have missed the signs and lie scattered among
their sisters. Cheat grass and weeds grow among the bottles and little
berrns of blown sand pile up against them.
I suppose that some civic-minded organization, or
persons condemned to perform community service, may one day clean up
all of those bottles. I will miss them when they are gone. There is
beauty and symmetry in those sparkling corridors of glass.
The bottles tell their stories, too. They tell of
people and their tastes and habits. I have repeatedly heard one of my
friends, Lloyd K., upon pondering litter consisting of mostly beer
containers, wonder aloud if all slobs are beer drinkers or if all beer
drinkers are slobs. Like Lloyd, I hate to see litter where it doesn’t
belong. Still, I like those corridors of glass.
I like to hike along sections of old, abandoned
highway. I like to stop and examine the detritus of man’s passing. I
have seen old car parts, jacks, tire tools, hubcaps, mangled wheels and
occasional wrenches. Most of all, though, is the glass; and most of the
glass is in the form of beverage containers. I like to find a place
along an old highway where there is water and big, old, cottonwood
trees. The old-time travelers moved along at a more sedate pace than we
do and didn’t seem to mind stopping along the way to eat or rest.
Glass has the potential to last hundreds of
thousands, perhaps millions, of years. In flights of fancy I project my
thoughts millennia into the ftiture. I wonder if mankind will still be
on the earth or will all men and women have been obliterated by wars of
mass destruction or disease. Assuming that there will still remain a
few of them in that distant future, and that they will be curious about
the ancients of our day, I wonder what they will make of the corridors
of glass.
Given enough time the pavement will crumble and
eventually be assimilated into the earth. The metal guard rails and
signs will ultimately succumb to the forces of nature. Posts and fences
will rot and rust away. The glass will be last to disappear. Long after
everything else is gone there will be corridors of glass streaming
across the landscape.
I wonder if some future wanderer will find as great
a pleasure in picking up an unbroken glass bottle as I do in examining
an unbroken artifact left by those who have passed this way in years
gone by. Not long ago I was walking along an old road and came across a
six-ounce Coke bottle partially buried by the way.
Last summer we were out getting a load of wood. When
we were finished loading wood, my son and a couple of grandsons began
shooting shotguns. Dried cow pies and dirt clods were flung into the
air to be turned to dust by a stream of shot from the gun. There were
tin cans and other evidence that we were standing where someone had
camped long ago. One of the boys picked up an old six-ounce Coke bottle
from the weeds and was about to throw it. I stopped him and it now sits
with the other upon a shelf in my room.
I wonder what some future wanderer will think of the
clusters of bottles that will be where road signs once stood along the
corridors of glass. Will he guess correctly that they were thrown by
the ancient passers by, or will he fabricate some other theory of
purposeful behavior. It is entirely possible that those clusters of
bottles may be given some deep, religious significance. Heck, they may
fence those sites off and charge admission to see them.