Confession of a reformed trash picker: I have begun to give back! For years I have relished the week in spring when citizens are permitted to place anything and everything at the curb for free pickup by the public works guys. Gleefully I have cruised around and loaded the car with objects of beauty and utility. A brass chandelier. A sturdy stepstool. Ice cream parlor chairs. This year, I have been making deposits instead. Since my town doesn't have a clean-up week, I've been taking junk to work with me and leaving it here and there with other people's trash in New Paltz. The dead de-humidifier. The mysterious metal frame I found inside when I bought the house. The un-repairable toaster oven. Oddly, I feel like a sneak. I pull over quickly and leave my junk in haste. This morning I glimpsed what looked like a plastic bag full of styrofoam balls. Wouldn't they be fun to have! . . . but no, I'm completely rehabilitated. I resisted the two director chairs, lacking only their canvas slings. The perfect round piece of plate glass. The hamster cage.

One of the first symptoms of my call to mission was my diminished desire to acquire stuff. Now, from my "lofty" new perspective, I look at these huge mountains of cast-off possessions and shake my head in wonder. People have so much to discard: swingsets, overstuffed chairs, bicycles, bald tires, ranges and washing machines, television sets, microwaves and box fans, scrap lumber. In one place I saw two entire lawn tractors parked neatly beside the other junk, which prompted me to wonder how the public works people manage to move all this stuff. As if in answer to my question, the next morning the crew was right in that spot: a small fleet of dump trucks aided by a front loader. Burly workers were filling the basket of the front loader; they waved me on cheerfully. So the piles have begun to disappear, little by little. I am not worried, however, that people won't have anything to throw out next year (although I won't be here to admire it). The self-storage rental unit places that dot the landscape everywhere I go must surely be full of extra stuff.