Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. Don't leave your swimming pools in our forest.

After a day of picking up trash in the West Magnolia Camping area, a group of local volunteers were astonished and disgusted by the amount of and variety of items that have been left behind by campers and transients who find temporary homes in our forests in the summer and fall.

Carrie Bladyka, a local massage therapist, came up with a plan to organize a gang of people who were sick of walking through trash-littered trails, or stumbling upon abandoned campsites filled with the detritus of other people's lives.

"Cleaning up after these people every year is not a permanent fix, but until something is done about it, the right thing to do is get the trash off the ground no matter whose responsibility it was supposed to be," says Bladyka. "We live here. It's a collective responsibility to keep our only habitat healthy."

About 25-30 people heard the call to action and showed up at the West Magnolia Trailhead on Saturday morning, October 18. They came in pickup trucks and cars with trailers and armed with large garbage bags and gloves. The carried shovels and rakes and wore boots, ready for whatever they found.

Once they received their instructions, they headed off, some to designated campsites, others into the woods, off the beaten track, to places where people had lived hoping no one would find them.

What the volunteers found was shocking.

Serene Chahall and Hilliary Martin discovered an abandoned campsite in the middle of an isolated area away from the campgrounds, with little space between the campfire and the live trees and dead, dry pines that were strewn on the duff-covered ground.

The women pulled up almost new blue tarps and then three or four sleeping bags that were rotten and covered with mold. Three tents had been left, along with a chair and a couple of parkas.

Hilliary said that people who got handouts down in Boulder often came to the mountains and just left the stuff to the rain and snow and dust and animals, for someone else to clean up.

Once they filled the bags, they shouted into the forest, hoping some of the other volunteers would find them and help haul the bags to the road.

The bags were gathered and loaded onto pickup trucks at the trailhead. One truck was filled high with camping gear, plastic chairs, a turquoise swimming pool, coolers, a Chevy Blazer rear seat, and a bunch of mystery buckets. There were empty liquor bottles and beer cans, canned food, and dirty disposable diapers.

Several members of the Nederland Fire Protection District and the Timberline Fire Protection District, on their own time, helped out with removing of stuff. Jim Harrison said, "We are here supporting the public and we want people who camp here to know that we are picking up their trash, keeping an eye on them."

One group found a roll of carpet and shards of glass from a bong. "None of this crap should be in our woods," said one of the volunteers.

Although the group had spoken to the Forest Service, the feds could not help out, saying that it was not allowed to confiscate personal property, but USFS Law Enforcement Officer, Paul Krisanitz, said he was ecstatic that it was getting done. As he drove by he gave the workers a thumbs up.

The group had broken up into small numbers and a couple of the women said they would not have felt safe coming upon a campsite by themselves, that doing it with a group felt better. Magnolia Road resident Bill Baumgartner said the event reminded him of when there was a Forest Watch group and said maybe that should be reinstated.

When all the bags had been loaded onto trucks, some members of the group were so energized they decided to head to Gordon Gulch and see how much junk they could haul out of that campground.

East Magnolia Road property owner Mike Shaw showed up with small baggies filled with seed and handed them out. "We need to grow alternatives to lodgepole pine," he said. "These are Ponderosa pine seeds to be scattered in the mitigated areas. If I get lucky I will have a few thousand Ponderosa and limber pine seeds ..We need to replace the lodgepole pines with better local species. They need to be planted this fall, 1/4" deep."

It is a first step and volunteers hope that campers will get the message and take their gear and garbage and uneaten food out from the area when they leave. In the meantime, the volunteers knew they did a good day's work.

"What a great day!" said Bladyka. "Thanks everyone for coming out and giving us a hand."

Volunteer Sasha Selle said, "It's looking pretty good but there are probably some sites off in the woods we haven't discovered yet. Lots of loose random trash that looks like the wind blew all over. ‘Twas Christine Deignan, Amber, and the Kortes that I mostly scouted with. Fun times! Grateful that the weather is so wonderful today."