Cigarette butts drive me crazy. My eyesight may be blurry, but I can spot a cigarette butt while riding along a beautiful singletrack or while hiking or when setting up a campsite. My brain is wired to focus in on this trash and it really bugs me. It is bad enough that these butts “harsh my mellow” but now I’ve got a new nemesis on the trail. Face masks!
Flicking cigarette butts has been glorified by everyone from movie stars to the Marlboro man. From combat soldiers to rock stars. A person who would never throw trash on a trail or around a campsite doesn’t give a second thought to flicking a butt. Smokers have been conditioned to believe (wrongly) that this is cool and acceptable behavior. The discarded masks are something else.
Discarded masks are, for the most part, dropped by accident. They fall out of a pocket or slip off an ear. Whoever drops a mask on the trail doesn’t realize it until they need to put it on and discover it missing. Unintentional or not, seeing this new trail litter is a bummer. On the bright side, a dropped mask is not going to start a fire.
A few times a month I’ll carry a Pickup and Reach Tool and a trash bag, but no way am I going to pick up a mask by hand. That’s just gross. I hope as more people get vaccinated, I’ll see less masks littering the trail. Then I can get back to ranting about cigarette butts.
