trick or treat?
There’s a small-town trail, a beautiful path along a local river. The area is an autumn attraction. Known for its tree-filled hills, art, and pioneering past, tourists come flocking this time of year. Halloween is an especially festive occasion and the crowds buzz with excitement.
This year was no different. Halloween 2025 fell on a Friday and the weather was perfect – not too hot and not too cold. The streets were filled with dinosaurs, heroes, villains, and more. I got to witness the vast array of vendors and townspeople setting up along the river trail, passing out candies to eager trick-or-treaters.
That weekend, I made a trip back into town and decided to investigate what remained along the river trail. Within a 1.5 mile walk, I collected 1.5 pounds of mostly-candy-wrappers. To be honest, I didn’t find the aftermath of a Halloween night to be as frightening as I anticipated. The community made a fair effort to clean up afterward. What remained was not so much care-less, I think, but more than likely accident.
I was glad to keep the 1.5 pounds from finding its way to the river, to the fish, to the birds, to the critters. After all, nothing exists in isolation. We can’t hide from it… litter haunts us all.
Littering. Smarties? Nope. Dum-Dum.
