CITO Imagine what we could do...together.

Yesterday J-bear97 and I stopped and found "Pine Row" on the way home from work. I always carry wal-mart/kroger bags in my cache pack so we can CITO any cache areas we visit. To my dismay yesterday we encountered such a mess of trash that we didn't have sufficient bags or other equipment to carry it out. What bothered me so much about it is that this cache site is over the back of the "privacy fences" of an adjoining neighborhood and it honestly appeared that the folks that live over there are in the habit of just chucking stuff over the back fence. Maybe that's not the case, maybe this stuff was dumped by others or blown there by the wind (not likely as it is not an area that should get much foot traffic and its at the top of a hill) but still. We carried out what we could and disposed of it properly and we're planning to go back and clean up more with the proper equipment (gloves, big trash bags, those poky sticks) probably next week.

The ideal/habit of of CITO could be one of the best "selling points" for geocaching if all of us that play the game would do it consistently. Imagine. Imagine what it would look like if we picked up the cans and plastic bottles and bags in the parking lots when we were seeking LPCs. Imagine what we could do for our city parks, especially those where our logs consistently say "I'd never have known about this place if it weren't for this cache if we would just CITO everywhere we go. Heck, imagine the places we could find to put caches if we stopped and CITO'd places we noticed were trashed. Not to mention, picking up trash provides ideal "stealth" when muggles are about.

This is the month for CITO events...and those are wonderful. But what I'm talking about is the impact of the entire area's geocachers picking up the habit of carrying a trashbag on the hunt and CITO'ing each site we search. I remember hearing when Memphis used to get awards for being one of the nation's most beautiful cities. This scene brought home for me why we don't anymore. There are hundreds, if not thousands of caches in the greater Memphis area. If we CITO'd each of them...imagine the impact we could have...just imagine...