Let's Not Be The Worst Versions Of Ourselves Outdoors
How many "nature is returning to its natural state" and "it's almost like we were the virus" memes have we seen floating around lately? Enough, surely.
The problem is that memes aside, nature's "return to natural" state seems to be a beautiful thing, like bears running around Yosemite or whatever, while humanity's natural state seems to be garbage. It's literal garbage too -- people just left over 13,000 pounds of it on Cocoa Beach in Florida. Global pandemic or not, the normal thing -- the normal thing! -- to do is pack your trash out after a trip to the beach. Despite what they might have you believe, seagulls can't eat every dropped Dorito. (That's Phil's job. Give them to him.)
That's after the issues with people going to the beach with no regard for safety in the first place. Miami Police issued thousands of specific warnings to people to be safe at the beach, and people weren't complying. We know it was thousands because apparently Miami PD counted.
Meanwhile, some have gone too far in the opposite direction with their beaches. Over in Spain, a very hard-hit country, officials from a coastal fishing village rigged up some tractors and sprayed down their beach with bleach. There's an ungodly amount of reasons not to dump bleach on anything, let alone a critical ecosystem. That thin barrier between the land and the sea is already fragile and doesn't need our dumbasses trying to Jokerize it. Environmentalists are worried that in this particular instance, the bleach affected what could have been a critical mating season for certain endangered birds.
National Parks are set to reopen on a limited basis soon, as are many beaches and state parks. Just because we haven't gotten much fresh air in the past two months doesn't give us an excuse to absolutely trash the outdoors when we finally get a chance to get out.
Top Image: Free-Photos/Pixabay