Coordinates for this Waymark are set at the Visitors Center for Torrey Pines State Reserve.
On September 30, 2014, the San Diego Union Tribune (
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reported the following story:
"Torrey Pines park ditches trash cans
Rangers say “Pack it in, pack it out;” Critics worry about litter
By Logan Jenkins | 3:54 p.m. Sept. 30, 2014
To understand the power and the glory of Torrey Pines, you have to pick through the trash.
In July, the state nature reserve removed all its trash cans up near the lodge.
The new hiking orders: “Pack it in, pack it out.”
The transition was anything but clean. Few pains were taken to prepare those who cared the most.
Torrey Pines Supervising Ranger Dylan Hardenbrook now admits the rollout “was flubbed. It was pathetic.”
The reaction from the reserve’s truest champions — the 200-strong Torrey Pines Docent Society and the 64-year-old Torrey Pines Association — was swift and mostly harsh.
In a critical letter to Hardenbrook, Lynn Flanagan of Carmel Valley said she’s seen a surge in widely dispersed trash.
“Clearly, people are littering because there are no trash cans,” she wrote.
Rangers’ reasons for the can pickup boil down to two:
Commentary: More Logan Jenkins columns about our region
First, food has been banned in the reserve for some 30 years. Why enable those who scoff at the law of the land?
Second, trucking out rubbish eats away at a lean budget. Trash was the reserve’s second-largest expense behind salaries.
But wilderness codes do not naturally apply in a metropolis, Flanagan suggested. Torrey Pines isn’t Mount Everest.
She asked, not rhetorically, what mothers were supposed to do with dirty diapers? “Are you concerned about used tissues wadded up on the sink, especially in flu season?”
Torrey Pines has always been prey to trash, vile food for critters. Thoughtless campers prompted Ellen Browning Scripps to create the park in 1921.
Since then, San Diego has viewed Torrey Pines as a fragile gift, a heroic last stand of rare native trees.
Many also adore it as an aerobic challenge, a heartbreaking hill threaded by the original concrete of the siren road, Highway 101.
Locally, only Torrey Pines, one of 16 natural reserves in the state’s 300-park system, could inspire such passion over trash.
Hardenbrook doesn’t see a dramatic uptick in refuse during this “trial period,” but it seems clear, at least to me, that rangers may need to do more about the restroom situation when the tempers settle. (Paper towels and soap don’t seem too much to ask.)
But park visitors need to do more, too.
They need to know how to behave in a cathedral. They must bring their Sunday best to the wild space.
They must leave behind nothing but footprints — and prayers.
“This open dialogue is welcome,” observes Peter Jensen, president of the Torrey Pines Association. “It once again shows how much the public loves this park and watches it closely.”
Jensen, one of San Diego’s best nature writers, sets the compass to true north.
No matter how dirty it gets, this trash talk illuminates how cherished is our hallowed last stand."