About
Check out the bloopers from the making of this video!
Karen Hawes
Okay, I’ll say it, “The Trash Lady.” Or, better yet, “The Queen of Clean.” Call me what you want, I’m sure there are some less-than-flattering descriptions to use, but I am kind of partial to, “Trashtronaut.”
Anyway, I have a personal website with entirely too much information about myself, what I’ve done, where I’ve been, and what I find interesting. Hop on over to www.karenhawes.com, to fill in countless hours of reading.
There are some educational things there too and I’ve even received a handful of random messages, from complete strangers, who have thanked me for putting all of this stuff in one place. There’s something there for everyone
The Idea
It was a dark and stormy night. . . well, not really. I think I was driving in my car, heading to Knoxville. The idea for this trip began in 2006 but it could even be dated back to 2004. However, I’ll start with 2006; during a trip to the northwest, a few months before I made it to Knoxville.
I was driving around Olympia, WA and needed a place to camp out for a few days. I headed into the hills, looking at my little map and following the road signs to what was supposed to be a camping area. After driving nearly an hour, winding up, and up, and up, around deforested zones and forested zones, I decided to quit searching and start car camping. While there, I discovered something that was lurking around in all of the places I’d been to before, in every country, every state, and every city I’d seen. Trash.
There was a quiet spot, or so it would seem, not too far from where I was parked for the next few days. After scaling a shallow gulch and small berm, I hopped down a tiny slope into a flat wooded area and took in the sights and smells of the juicy northwestern lushness. However, I also found an uninvited guest: beer cans. They were everywhere. After gathering them up into a pile, scavenging for the ones hidden under leaves and behind ferns, I got to thinking. This all drove home that lurking image I’d seen in so many places – trash, left behind or otherwise moved into every possible corner of living and non-living spaces. I was saddened by the realization that this is how “our world is,” no matter where we are or how far we think we are from it.
That was early summer; by late fall I had an idea.
Being a data-freak engineer, I wanted to understand the boundary conditions of trash. I figured I’d start out with the basics: observe and report. But, gathering one set of data is not enough – I wanted comparative data. So, I decided I’d compare my observations along one track – one which would include more than just trash but also that of culture – starting at the top of the continent and ending at the bottom of the next continent. The Americas, in one fell swoop! A “clean sweep,” so to speak.
The name was originally going to be “Basuras,” only because “www.basura.com” was already taken. I found that this name, albeit cool sounding, was often lost in translation. So, after many, many iterations – over more than a year of intermittent thoughts – I settled on “Trash Trip.”
The core concept has always remained the same: travel from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Argentina. The specifics have varied. I was going to drive it all myself; only to decide on driving the US/Canada part, sell my car when I’m in the southwest, and travel by “other means” to all points south. I have a large network of friends, from work, school, traveling, and (above all) skydiving. To add to my network, beginning in April 2007, I’ve been using www.couchsurfing.org. Photos and video were always in the plan and now I’m adding GPS/Google Earth and a podcast. I’m fully expecting there to be additional changes, as I move south.
