A few times a year, we and our partners organize to spend a few a handful of mornings cleaning up different parts of the NCA. In recent years there’s been focusing on the McCullough Hills area where bullet casings, broken clay and glass, and more litter the area. On September 19, Friends of Sloan Canyon joins the Bureau of Land Management, the City of Henderson, and the Clark County Library District at the McCullough Hills Trailhead for this year’s National Public Lands Day cleanup. We’ll spend a few hours with trash bags, rakes, and trail work at the gateway to the wild, volcanic backcountry behind Henderson. And, of course we hope you’ll join us.

These cleanup days, they only exist because trash and wear accumulate during the hundreds of non-cleanup days each year. Every wrapper that blows off a granola bar, every doggy poop bag left on the trail “by accident”, every corner cut around a rocky patch instead of staying on the marked path, every destroyed shooting target…it all adds up. And eventually it takes a coordinated crew with rakes and trash bags to undo it.

Although activities like these make up a good portion of the work FSC engages in, the most powerful stewardship tool we can bring to bear isn’t something bigger like larger organized cleanups, more bags, or more tools. It’s something much smaller: simple acts of thoughtfulness. We hope to motivate an ethic people can bring with them every single time they head out on the trail. Pack out what you bring in, even the small stuff. Stay on the trail instead of cutting a new path through fragile desert soil. Bring your dog’s waste bag with you, double bag it or put in a dry sack if you have to. Keep a small trash bag in your day pack, and if you see litter that isn’t yours, pick it up. None of it takes special training or a scheduled event. Really, it’s just a matter caring for the landscape you enjoy spending time in, deciding to do something about it, and building that habit.

Multiply that habit by every visitor, every weekend, and something interesting happens: the cleanups get easier. Smaller. And yes, we dare to dream, folks, perhaps one day cleanup events like NPLD could be rendered largely unnecessary. Not unnecessary because anyone stopped caring, but because caring became the default instead of the exception. That’s a genuinely nice thing to imagine for a place like this. We’ll never stop dreaming like that.

So, the September 19 cleanup is still a great, concrete way to pitch in for a few hours, and here’s the link to RSVP if you’re free that Saturday morning. But really, the bigger ask is this: next time you’re out on a Sloan Canyon trail, bring a little bit of that cleanup-day mindset with you. Consider simple actions that will help keep this amazing landscape a little wilder and a little more cared-for because of it.