One category of litter which I find occasionally is clothing. How does one lose their clothes and not know it? I find this a little perplexing and I am surprised more people aren’t walking around naked — so many clothes seem to get shed and discarded in our city. Outerwear, innerwear, overwear and, yes, even underwear.
Years ago in late winter after a dusting of fresh snow, I was walking to Northlands following someone’s track, who wandered and wobbled, to and fro, possibly inebriated. Then, in the middle of the trail, they had left behind one snow boot and a little further on, there was the other. From the tracks you could see they carried on wearing only socks. You would think a person would notice that, especially when they got home and tried to take their boots off which they were no longer wearing.
It would be even harder to walk with only one on, I suppose. Just recently, I found one running shoe still laced up, just off the trail on a short cut one might take if they were in a real hurry. So much in a hurry that they lost one shoe, but they must have noticed this because they then ran over sharp gravel and stones.
This, of course, begs the question: what were they running from or to? To add to this mystery, farther down the trail was a dark grey hoody that looked almost brand new, which someone had taken off and tossed to the side. Were these two items related, I wondered?
Last year, I found a Pink Floyd T-shirt that looked brand new. Who in their right mind would throw out Pink Floyd? Another time, a shirt that was so brand new that it still had the store’s label on it. I have also found those little hangers like the ones used by stores. Hmmm … there could be a pattern there.
If the clothes look lost, I usually hang them up for the person to retrieve, but that seldom seems to happen. Now, I can understand babies or little kids losing stuff, but older kids and adults? That is more of a puzzle.
Some humans are rather prone to losing things, that is certainly true, and they travel through life leaving a trail of lost items behind. But you don’t just lose your underwear. That would take some doing. I am sure that every piece of lost clothing has an interesting or colourful tale to tell.
Sometimes I get a little concerned about the clothes I find. In winter if a person gets hypothermia, there is a stage where they get quite hot and people have been known to loosen or discard clothes, thinking that will cool them down. They then get extremely tired, sit down, fall asleep and can even freeze to death. So, I get a little worried if I see someone’s jacket or sweater on the trail in winter.
In summer when I see certain clothes, I could be walking into a crime scene of some sort where someone got assaulted and lost some of their clothing in the process. That would be horrible. But one can’t take every piece of clothing they find to the RCMP because most are simply lost or thrown away. We really do live in a throwaway society and some people just simply throw things away. If they don’t like the way something fits or if they spill something on it, they just throw it away.
I know most people just go down the trail and go past all the litter there, often without even noticing it. People can be single focused and walk around with blinders on or the ‘I don’t want to get involved’ attitude. Others are curious or playing at being an urban archeologist and you want to know the story of each and every piece of litter you find, just as some people want to know the name of every bird, plant, or flower they see.
Seeing what gets thrown away can add interest to your rambles in Urbania. Try it some day!