One trash bag out of many

ChicoSol publishes first-person reporting and guest commentary on Mondays.

Ever since I began reporting in Chico, I’ve been waiting to fill that bright-orange trash bag at the Butte Environmental Council’s Bidwell Park and Chico Creeks Cleanup. On Saturday, I finally did. 

I have reported on the event twice. It was even one of my first stories for The Orion, Chico’s student newspaper. But both times, I felt a sting of guilt holding a notebook and pen while participants had trash bags and gloves.

Journalism sometimes requires disconnecting yourself from the community and viewing it from a distance. But after covering the event from a distance twice, I wanted to tell the story through my own experience. 

The rule of reporting still applies: write what happened. I had no idea the clean up would force me to confront my struggle with the feeling I don’t have my own community. 

I arrived at Hooker Oak Park for BEC’s 39th annual cleanup without a notebook and pen. I waited in line to sign a waiver, grab a map of an area that needed to be cleaned and a trash bag half the size of me. 

Hoards of families, community groups and friends filled the grassy field of the historic park, and eventually they sprawled out across other sections of Bidwell Park. 

The first trash I collected was at World of Trees Nature Trail, near the Chico Creek Nature Center. I was joined by my roommate and two other ChicoSol reporters, who came on their day off to clean the park. After a short time we parted ways and I met up with a friend of mine, Bryce Ingersoll, who is on a brif haitus from his job at BEC. 

Strangely, the place he had me meet him was in my neighborhood. I had never noticed the amount of trash that accumulated just 20 feet from my door. 

So we, along with his girlfriend and friends, walked down Little Chico Creek, collecting rubbish ranging from glass fragments to batteries to shredded cloth. 

He said that last year the place was worse. He recalled pulling TVs from bushes and that he didn’t make it very far before filling a bag. From a reporter’s perspective, this would have been something I grabbed onto as a way to show how events like these can make a difference. 

The first hour of our conversation felt like a casual interview, which has grown typical of all of my relationships. I have a hard time escaping the stories I’m consumed in. 

He asked my opinion about the solar farm planned for Skyway; I dodged the question. While I consider him a friend, I feel a need to keep the journalistic barrier up because he’s so involved within the environmental sector of Chico. 

In such a small town, It is hard to find people who are unattached from my coverage area, and so I constantly feel a divide between myself and the people I interact with. 

So during the first hour of that conversation, I felt like I had failed to do what I set out for; to escape the journalistic role and exist as the community member I also am. 

Then, as we picked up a bunch of batteries, I felt the feeling shift. 

This happened as I got to know Bryce’s friend, Kaiden, and began viewing the conversation less through what I needed for a story. I learned there is currently a whale in the Sacramento River and the four of us talked about rock climbing and the weather. 

While we talked, we cleaned. Sweat trickled down our foreheads as the temperatures rose. The bags got heavier as we tidied up a camp under a bridge. 

Throughout reporting and my everyday life, cleaning up litter has become a theme for being a good stakeholder in our community. 

I recalled interviewing a woman who has been homeless in Chico since losing her house in the Camp Fire. She was frustrated with how messy the creek near One-Mile gets, and that every week she’ll clean the litter in an effort to make it more comfortable for herself and others.

Another time I met two older women while hiking in Upper Park with my dog, Bear. They cleaned trash for a few hours each week through the City of Chico’s Partners, Ambassadors Leaders & Stewards program. 

The four of us, joined at the end by another group of cleanup volunteers, walked back to the car around noon, and when we reached the outlet from the creek, there were 13 bags there waiting for someone to pick them up. 

I placed my one bag in the pile, making it 14, and walked with Bryce back to where we parked, setting up a plan to climb soon. 

I still asked how much trash in total was collected because I thought it was needed for this story. ButI was told they wouldn’t know for a few days. 

I will be honest, I can not tell you a lot about the specifics of the event, the hot spot locations or if this one was more successful than the last. But I am sure there will be a lot of people who attended the Sept. 19 cleanup that will learn that information in the Enterprise-Record, and so will I. 

But for the first time in a while, I didn’t care about getting all the information. It was about getting my hands dirty side by side with the volunteers who gave their time.

The one bag of trash I filled Saturday is not going to make a noticeable difference, but the hundreds who showed up to fill even half a bag will. 

Chris Hutton is a freelance journalist who contributes frequently to ChicoSol.