Welcome to Friendsgiving. It is a time to gather and appreciate the company closest to whoever is hosting. To revel in another year with your favorite people. To taste the feast hodgepodged together from each guest’s carefully crafted dish, selected by how soul-comforting it will be. To hope other people enjoy your grandmother’s casserole as much as you do, taking secret glances as they taste it for the first time. To drink just enough to have the courage to find a deeper bond with your mutuals, or just to have some small talk while your besties are in the kitchen.
I don’t like calling these interactions small talk, I prefer calling them little talks. No matter how short my time with a semi-stranger I usually end up learning something new. A little talk I had during this Friendsgiving led down the backroads just outside of the urban sprawl to dumps and garbage. Having a little too much slow and low and mulled wine, I was making some bold claims that trash and dumps didn’t use to exist. And to be fair, garbage is way different than it was before. Everything thrown away used to be biodegradable. Some sort of plant material, poopy, or animal parts. This newfound friend reminded me that a lot of what we know of early humans comes from their trash. What they have left behind in a large pile that we happen to stumble on, uncovering the daily lives of others long before us. And I shouldn’t be too pretentious. Everything we use on this earth comes from this earth, and the way people choose to return it to the Earth when we’re done with it is super fascinating. With that, these are:
My Five Favorite Trash Sites in North America!
I’m not going to go in any particular order here.
3. The Wiyot/Tulawat Midden
Eureka sprang up on the northern edge of coastal California during the Gold Rush. In Humboldt Bay right next to the town sits Tuluwat island, a sacred site to the Wiyot peoples, where in the past was the host site of a ten-day renewal ceremony. This site had incredible importance, not only from the two Wiyot villages that used to stand there but also for the six-acre Tuluwat midden that sat underneath. A midden, or clamshell mound, is a look into the past, not simply an old trash pit. It holds the physical history of the people that dwelled there. It serves as a burial site, not only of ancestors but of culture. They hold the cuisine, tools, customs, and people of the past. This was forcibly taken from the Wiyot in a massacre in the early months of 1860. Settlers brutally murdered the Wiyot on the island, at the rivers, and on the prairie. All because a white man purchased the island and wanted to develop it. No one was prosecuted for this crime. And the Midden began to deteriorate from the construction of dykes and grave robbing in the name of “Amateur archeology”. That history will forever be gone. However, in an unprecedented event, the Eureka city council decided to give the land back to the Wiyot in 2004. (This was of course, after the tribes purchased and cleaned up a portion of the land.) The residents came together in reconciliation of the past and acknowledged the harm that has been caused by centuries of genocide. It isn’t a perfect solution. It will not work everywhere. But for now, it stands as a testament that land back does in fact work. The ancient midden still stands and now has the chance to be preserved and observed by its original people. To borrow the words on a plaque outside of Knoydart, Scotland: “Justice!… History will judge harshly the oppressive laws that have led to the virtual extinction of a unique culture from this beautiful place.”
To learn more:
https://www.wiyot.us/186/Tuluwat-Project https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe1-2-this-is-where-it-begins
4. The Louisiana Coast
The southern United States can be a place of beauty. Precious wetlands, swamps, and marshes spread across the Louisiana coastline. It’s a shame to say that they are disappearing due to climate conditions and overutilization of natural resources. However, Tulane University and a glass recycling facility have found a simple solution. Replace the coast with trash! Well, Replace the missing course sand of the coastal area with pulverized commercial glass. While not your typical trash site it falls under my category of what humans do with their waste to return it to the land. And that is what they are doing with this glass. Returning it to the land, protecting and restoring the ecosystems that desperately need the sand that humans have taken from them. It builds the land back up instead of tearing it down. For that, the coast deserves a spot on this list.
To learn more: https://news.tulane.edu/pr/tulane-scientists-and-engineers-use-recycled-glass-sand-prevent-coastal-erosion
1. (Tied for first) The Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuges
Of course, my favorites are in my beloved home state. From the vast grasslands of the great plains to the awe-inspiring heights of the rocky mountains, Colorado will always be home to something very near and dear to the heart of America. LARGE SCALE MILITARY OPERATIONS BABY!!! We hollowed out a fucking mountain for NORAD, and before that, we manufactured a SHIT ton of weaponry along the front range. We had not one, but two sites near the mile-high city, The Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and the Rocky Flats plant. The weapons made weren’t for simple killing either. The Rocky Mountain Arsenal specialized in chemical warfare. Mustard Gas, Napalm, White Phosphorus, chlorine gas, and Sarin. Rocky Flats produced plutonium buttons for nuclear weaponry. All of this weaponry does such horrific and torturous things to the human body, that it’s considered a human rights violation to use it on anyone nowadays. It also had disastrous effects on the environment. Ground leakage, groundwater contamination, and radiation killed wildlife and caused birth defects, leading to lawsuits and environmental protections. The past left behind is dark and full of toxins, but the future of the sites is something a bit precious. On top of the waste, the land has been converted. In place of violence and harm, preservation has taken hold with two national wildlife reserves. There you can find the mighty bison feasting on the native grasses of the plains next to the burrows of the black-footed ferret. Even if I hadn’t taken field trips to these sites as a child they would be close to my heart. They have been reutilized as an apology for the ground that they stand on. They serve as a home free of fear for their occupants. They allow people to explore and connect with the land and its inhabitants. For that, they share the number one spot.
2. The Cerutti Mastadon Kill Site
A common sight in California is herds of excavators grazing on the natural grassland to make way for more concrete highways. In San Diego County, as happens so frequently in construction, one of these caterpillars took a bite of the earth to make way for a drainage pipe and uncovered something unusual. Ancient bones of forgotten continental creatures were found—fossils of ground sloths, mammoths, dire wolves, and a partial mastodon skeleton. A grouping of stones and cobbles surround this strange graveyard. The impressions on these stones and the unnatural dismemberment of the bones led researchers to believe hominids had used the space as an ancient kill site. This take was incredibly controversial. Why? What is so important about a pile of discarded meat bones that has the archeology community in such a fracas? Radiation dating shows the bones are over 130,000 years old. Think about this for a second. 130,000 YEARS OLD. If the theorem is correct, every theory about how early Indigenous Americans came to the continent is thrown out the window. Fuck the Bering land bridge, fuck the Coastal Highway, Fuck everything we thought we knew! If the findings are correct, that’s around the same timeline that all other hominids began their migration around the globe. People could have been in the Americas since the great apes first found themselves in Asia and Europe. Academia has often used the timeline of native peoples’ arrival to legitimize their conquest and genocide. Another way to say, “This land was never really theirs, they came from elsewhere too.” It delegitimizes their creation story and culture. That is why this small pile of trash left behind by early hunters is so fucking cool. It makes a point. It shakes things up. It can be justice wrapped in evidence. And that is why it is number two on my list.
To learn more:
Honorable mention: The Tacoma Landfill and Recycling Plant
The only special feature of this landfill is that you pass a really good Pho place on the drive there. Their menu is only in Vietnamese, so I usually order by picture. The last time I went there, I got what I thought would be a spicy noodle soup, Bun Bo Hue. It had a blood broth, liver, and blood curd. I was not expecting the irony taste of blood, as I was recovering from a stomach bug. I ended up yakking in the parking lot. But that is beside the point. This dump has a lot of sentimental value to me. My house at the time had come furnished by previous sorority girls who lived there. We thought we could leave it in that condition for the next tenants, But my Landlord said everything had to go by the end of the day, or we would be charged and not receive our security deposit. I was the only housemate still in the area, so the whole task was up to me. This meant four runs of broken down furniture, stolen Traffic signs, and tires that had accumulated over decades of Greek life occupancy piled in the back of my station wagon. It was hellish, sweaty, and tiresome. That dump smelled worse than rotting flesh. But on that last haul, Covered in sweat, windows down driving through the rainforest suburbs in that sweet Pacific summer, I was in that zone of reflection found in monotonous tasks. I felt the future coming hard and the past disappearing. I grew a sense of comfort with what was to come. I had been in a depressive episode for a long time, complete with bed rot and doom scrolling for entire days the previous week. The exertion and the stress and the stench and watching the trash compactor destroying our old possessions took me out of that and made me hopeful. I felt cleansed and renewed. For that, it’s one of my favorites.
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