Many decades ago when I lived in the Pomona valley I took several day trips and many overnighters into the San Gabriel wilderness. In the mid-1980s there were many people living out there; roughing it. I made every subsequent trip armed as there were some dangerous types up there. Many criminals, Viet Nam vets, out to escape the world, lived up in places friends and I found nearly impossible to hike up into. On many trips we’d find - with Brahma as my witness - broken ice chests, piles of diapers, cheap aluminum lounge chairs and garbage, heaps and heaps of old liquor and beer bottles many miles from any trail head. I was told (by other campers, police, park rangers) that Laotion Hmong and several communities of central Americans would routinely hike into those remote places for family retreats and leave all that stuff behind. Hey, if THEY can do it, urban-American blacks can too. They obviously don’t want to. So leave ‘em the heck alone, more for US to enjoy. Or, in classic liberal-progressive fashion, start agitating for a “government program” to take those kids out of the city into the wilderness at great taxpayer expense - push it into the school system, not like they don’t have enough trouble just educating the kids who really want to learn something besides sex and drugs and pop music that they won’t readily adopt another unfunded top-down statist mandate. Sure.
This is one of the problems with hiking. I won't even use the paved nature trails near my home because of the various threats to safety.
Interesting
Pomona 1959-1977.
“Many criminals, Viet Nam vets, out to escape the world...”
Oh, dear. She’s found me out.
Seriously, the people in the ‘hoods, the ghettos, the projects, they love outdoor recreation. Things like shooting drugs in back alleys, having gunfights across busy streets; it’s all a matter of choice, as I see it. Choice is good, right?