Yet here we are buying bottled water even by the cup. People buy teeny bottles that hold less than 8 ounces of water. Then while hiking or traveling, they drink and then toss.

Plastic marked PET and HDPE for are said to be recyclable. Said bottles are shredded and melted into “nurdles,” the picturesque name for plastic pellets used as raw material to make more plastic products.

That sounds promising, but according to the Container Recycling Institute, 70% of all bottles wind up in landfills, the ocean, or littering the landscape.  On trails in Grand Canyon National Park, I mostly pick up empty water bottles, each one probably weighing one-third of an ounce. It seems a job that will never be obsolete. Shouldn’t we have learned by now that refilling water bottles is the way to go?

We’ve all learned that plastic is nasty stuff. Yale Climate Connections cautions that each time plastic is melted and remolded it degrades, and recycled plastic is more toxic than “virgin.” The plastic can be “up-cycled” once into a fleece jacket, but eventually that jacket will get shuffled off to the landfill. 

The real reason to drink bottled water is because of its purity, right? Pure fill-in-the-blank spring water. Yet the Los Angeles Times found that about 64% of bottled water is filtered tap water, and Consumer Reports found that bottled water can contain heavy metals and bacteria. A liter of bottled water might contain an average of 240,000 plastic micro-particles.

Even if bottled water comes from a spring, it must still undergo filtration and ozonization, meaning it is no longer “pure” spring water. Most spring water is also said to be minimally treated to maintain its “natural” characteristics, whatever those are.

Let’s talk about the carbon footprint. Is it green behavior to fly water across the country from a remote Pacific island?  In areas where water is mined locally, sometimes from public land, are locals concerned about depleted aquifers? Is that water taken for bottling—in effect—stolen?

Then there’s designer water with all kinds of flavoring, hydrogen water, which adds more H2, or oxygen-enriched water.  At what point does water become sort-of-or-not-water? 

I was once on a VIP tour of a resort in the desert that boasted bespoke water. When those bottles ran out, I offered to refill them, but people told me they would drink nothing from the tap. So I took the bottles into the company van, refilled them from a huge, portable jug that had been filled from who-knows-where but probably the tap, and handed them back. I was told triumphantly: “See? This water is superior.”

At the beginning of the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon one day, I saw a hiker trying to tie a flat of bottled water onto her pack. I politely ask what the Sam Hill she was doing and was told that she’d been advised to drink a liter of water every hour while hiking. I pointed out that this particular trail was popular in part because potable water was provided at several rest stops along the way. She looked offended: “I do not drink tap water.”

As long ago as 2012 it was widely reported that 20% of the waste stream in national parks was disposable water bottles, leading to sales of bottled water banned in parks. Unfortunately, that ban was rescinded by the federal government in 2017, though parks still encouraged visitors to bring and refill their own bottles. No matter—the parks estimate that most of the waste they dump each year is still plastic bottles.

Who remembers drinking from the garden hose. Anyone? Did your fingernails turn black and fall off? A character in the book, True Grit, proclaimed that he once drank water from a muddy hoof print and was glad to get it. While I might not go that far, I have drunk from a lot of questionable sources, and I’m still here to tell the tale. You might want to try the tap.

Marjorie ‘Slim’ Woodruff is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is a Grand Canyon educator.

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 In mid-March, at Phantom Ranch at in the bottom of the canyon, 40 hikers shared a table, merrily passing dishes around with their bare hands.  A week later one of the hikers reported on social media that she had come down with C0VID-19. 

 Concessionaires were concerned enough to close the hotels and restaurants. There.  Done. Except the train and busses dropped off a few hundred visitors at a pop.  Parking lots were full.  People jostled shoulder-to-shoulder at the lookouts and flocked onto the trails. 

 Our tiny general store was crowded with tourists until the end of March. Normally, visitors purchase a six-pack and chips. But the virus worried them enough that they loaded carts full of our meager supplies. Finally, the store limited visitation to 10 shoppers at a time, locked all but the front door, and marked six-foot intervals for the line, which went halfway out the parking lot. 

 Ah, but surely the trails were free and clear. No longer on the job, I hiked into the canyon to see the flowers in bloom, taking an early start to avoid the crowds.  Except for that group of 30 kids on spring break.  And that extended family of 10, and eventually, 300 other hikers.

 The Bright Angel Trail is about six feet wide with a cliff on either side: one going up and one going down. You want to be cautious stepping aside.  Alas, no one was stepping.  I would see someone coming, cram in next to the cliff and hold my breath. 

 Except many of them wanted to chat.  “How far to the river?”  “Mmmm, don’t know, keep your distance. “

 Six feet is surely not even sufficient when one is exercising hard.  Panting, gasping, coughing and spitting send the nasty droplets of virus as far away as 12 feet. 

 I made it to the camping area where the redbud trees grow and idly watched an illegal camper argue with a park ranger.  “Overnight permits had been cancelled, said the astonished camper, yet rangers were still on patrol?”

 He contended that a bus driver told him he wouldn’t need a permit. The ranger assured him he was grossly misinformed and told him to move along.   A half-hour later the camper was still proclaiming that he meant no harm and should stay, while the ranger was insisting, from 10 feet away, that he get out of Dodge.  I left before she pulled out the citation book.

 By late March the park tried keeping only the main road open and blocking off roads to residential areas.  But people just parked along the road and walked in or simply moved the cones. This enraged laid off workers who posted photos on social media of out-of-state license plates  — many from virus epicenters. 

 On April 1 the Park closed: Nobody here now but us mostly unemployed chickens.  The occasional entitled individual still manages to sneak in, only to be ratted out quickly.

 I would like to be working.  I have sewn 50 face masks and sorted through 20 years of photos.  I even vacuumed the rug.  But I do not want to share cooties with hundreds of visitors from infected areas who laugh at me when I clamber up rocks to get out of their way. Or who sneer at my face mask as they crowd behind me in line until I fix them with my patented basilisk glare.

 Our opening date has been moved back twice. Permits and reservations have been negated.  My classes were canceled for April, then for May, then for June. 

 To reach any national park in the West, people have to travel. Travel is risky and helps spread the virus.  As for the imagined wide-open spaces at Grand Canyon, you might want to picture a different reality. Just before the closedown, the park was more of a mosh pit with elk and squirrels.

 People are understandably antsy and anxious to get outside, and the Grand Canyon is a wondrous place to visit.  But the canyon will be here when this epidemic is but an unpleasant memory.  If we do not treat this pandemic seriously, many of us may not be.

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