Holy week is a just a few days away. with feet itching for a getaway, let us not forget a few salient rules. Allow me to rephrase and simplify that to a single statement - leave no trash behind. It's a distillation of the principles of leave no trace. One of my pet peeves when moving around is seeing the beautiful scenery marred by trash (above photos were taken on the Mt. Makiling trail, such a shame, really). In mountaineering, the rule is: what you bring in, you bring out. And let's not hide under the lousy excuse of "oh, it's just a candy wrapper!" If thousands think the same way, God forbid, how much trash will find their way to some place other than the garbage dump. We have a beautiful country; it's everybody's responsibility to keep it clean.
Some tips: Keep that plastic shopping bag in your backpack for your trash; crush mineral water bottles when empty and bring them out of the site you're visiting; don't discard batteries indiscriminately (they leech out hazardous chemicals into the soil); if you have to answer the call of nature out there, please do it far from a water source. To reiterate: Take only pictures. Kill only time. Leave nothing but footprints. And if I may add, take your trash back with you (as in don't turn nature into your trash can). Mother Nature will thank you for it.
