Trail of Trash

Let's hope that phrase doesn't turn out to be a completely appropriate nickname used by future historians to describe the developments of the 20th and 21st centuries that led humanity down a path that ends with the destruction of most or all of Earth's non-human ecosystems.

This phrase could also aptly describe the wake behind the advancing fronts of civilization on Earth, and the phrase definitely applies to the scene I came upon between two noise barrier walls next to Highway 87 in San Jose, California. I was looking for an access road to a derelict piece of land next to the highway that I have dreamed of nurturing into an urban farm. This is what I found.

After getting over my initial disgust, I reminded myself that a significant number of humans on this planet live in trash heaps thousands of times the size of the one I discovered. I suppose I could just be glad the pile I discovered doesn't look like this...

By Ashley Felton (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

...yet.