There is a monastery on the Appalachian Trail. The guide book said that the monks allow thru-hikers to camp there. I was going to stop there and take a couple half days off to meditate and enjoy monastic life while I waited for another hiker to catch up with me.
First clue that this wasn’t going to be the retreat I had hoped for was the used diaper and the empty half rack of beer laying on the trail. As I tried to find my way to the place where the hikers were allowed to stay, I was met with loud live music and about 10,000 Haitians. I kept asking people where the ball field was but no one spoke English. There was trash everywhere.
I finally found the ball field. One of the monks showed up and welcomed me. He seemed totally oblivious that 10,000 Haitians had just trashed his monastery. He said that they usually would leave some food for the hikers, and sure enough a woman pointed at a barrel of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a bag of rolls. A couple hours later everyone was gone and I pushed some trash aside and put up my tent.
The next morning the sun that I had seen little of, came out. I woke to looking out at the trash strewn ball-field. I had some time to kill because I was waiting for another hiker to catch up, so I started to pick up the trash. As I was picking up the trash, one of the monastery people drove up and waving his arm out at the trash covered field shouted, “Did you do this!” and then laughed.
It felt so good to be walking without a pack, in the morning sun, and doing something useful after all those months of doing nothing but hiking, that I just kept going and in a few hours I had the whole field cleaned up.
Beautiful story!