ooh I thought your posts were very interesting Paulus. and a view from a quite different angle. It's interesting to see that old photo, which reminds us that people have been leaving Stuff at sites for a long time. And people have been getting irritated by it for a long time too.

But one of the things it made me think of - I think (just) one of the reasons it admittedly tends to irritate me when I go somewhere and find a tea light abandoned, or a crisp packet, or a handful of flowers, or a corn dolly, is because I've generally travelled quite a long way to see that place. and when you haven't been somewhere before there's always this hope and expectation that it might be Nice and all that you want from it (whether wild or spiritual or neatly mown or whatever). But sometimes you get disappointed because some git has burnt their car out nearby, or there's a big 'KEEP OUT' sign, or the remains of someone's picnic, or a handful of assorted swallowhead springs style stuff. So your hope is ruined and you're faced with reality. And sometimes I go to these places for a bit of peace and quiet and to escape reality, so it pisses me off.

But, to get back to the point, I think maybe in the past you wouldn't have been able to travel so easily, so you'd have spent more time visiting your local site. And you would feel more that you could take it under your wing. So when you arrived, you might just clear away the tat as a regular feature of your visits. I think a lot of the stuff people leave, they're never coming back for are they, because often they live miles and miles away, and that's what irks. But if you lived nearby, you'd come back, and you'd see your own decaying flowers, or crisp packets, and you'd clear them away. Or you might not even leave them in the first place.

So I think there is something about a sense of ownership that's required - or at least a sense of taking responsibility, which people who drift through just don't get.

And, if you regularly visited somewhere, and took it under your wing, you would see tidying it up as part of your 'job' and part of expressing your respect for the site (more respect in my opinion than abandoning stuff there inthe first place) - and maybe you would be irked at people leaving stuff, but the mental benefit of clearing stuff would outweight that in the end??

Also, I'm sure there's some parallel with people who work in churchyards and cemeteries, because people leave flowers there, but they must have to come and clear them up when they get mangy, and I'm sure they don't think 'those bloody flower leavers, why don't they just desist from leaving them in the first place, I have to clear the bloody things up' .

Hmmmm