The green eyed, red haired woman sat up a full minute before her alarm went off with a mixture of frustration, dread, anger and the slightest hint of excitement. Every year she spent Earth Day volunteering her time to clean up one place or another or sometimes to raise money for a good cause. When Lila had been a young girl she'd been filled with a warmth that she got from knowing she was doing the right thing. Helping the planet and cleaning it up just a little. Now that she was thirty it wasn't about doing the right thing because it made her happy, it was about doing her duty. Lila got a little knot of anger in her stomach when she went back to the same beaches, forests and highways she'd visited before and found them just as trashed sometimes worse than before. It was hard to deal with the truth but the truth was people just did not give a fuck and it made her want to just find the people and punch them in the nose. There was a bright spot though.
The guys who did come out to these things could basically be broken down into four groups. The boys who were dragged along by a parent or volunteered to keep out of some sort of trouble, the old men who were true believers, the pussy hounds who knew there would be lots of "hippy free love" chicks at these things and true believers. The reality was either of the last two groups looked pretty good at the end of a long day of sweat and dirt and Lila wasn't such a pure hearted noble that she held it against a man that he was only doing something because it might possibly get him laid.
After all that was a big part of what she planned for her own reward at the end of the day.
Lila remained in bed for until her alarm announced that it was time to get up, more because she didn't want to come back across the room just to shut it off later. The barely five foot waif like beauty stripped out of her pajamas on the way to a quick hot shower and then wriggled herself into a pair of khaki shorts that barely covered the lacey transparent blue panties she had on beneath them. She finished the outfit with a turquoise top. Her ex used to tell her that when she dressed like that and pulled her hair back into a pony tail she looked like some famous video game character; though not nearly as busty he'd tease.
That was one of the reasons they were only friends now. The other one being he made a much better friend with benefits than a boyfriend. Lila pushed those thoughts from her mind as she laced herself into her ankle high tan boots and headed down to the shuttle bus waiting to pick her up.
A half hour later she stepped off the bus at Shadow Falls National Park. It was a place of particular interest to Lila, her father used to take her up there all the time. They'd fish and hike and camp. He was the one who taught her to always leave it better than you found it. Just looking out the window on the drive up brought back lots of warm memories.
Those were almost spoiled by the sight of her precious camp grounds. Most of it was just stupid stuff, even when she'd been a teen this was a favorite spot for the kids to drive up if the wanted to go unmolested. So the piles of beer cans and liquor bottles didn't surprise her and as disgusting as they were the used condoms scattered around were to be expected. There was more than just that though. There were dirty diapers, radios and someone had even made the trip up to dump a couch off.
"Well you guys know the drill by now. Don't wander too far there are still bears and cougars in the area. They usually don't bother people but still make sure that someone can see you. Lunch will be served promptly at noon."
Lila was only half listening to the guide. She claimed her bag and a stick with a nail on it and immediately started cleaning up one of the campsites. It was one that she and her father had used dozens of times, in fact it was up here that she'd had her first drink (that either parent knew about) and her father had uttered the immortal words. "Don't tell Mom." It made it a little hard not to smile when she stuffed a couple of cans into her trash bag.
By the time lunch rolled around Lila was soaked with sweat. Her reddish hair was hanging in wet clumps around her head and her shirt was clinging to her breasts. It wasn't the heat that was getting to her though; the main thing making her so hot was the constant feeling of eyes scouring her bare skin. Lila could almost feel the men staring at her and then quickly looking away when she tried to catch their gazes. It wasn't unwelcome, she chose the outfit precisely because it would get their attention and it wasn't a mistake that she kept bending at the waist when they were behind her or squatting down when one of them was in front of her. She enjoyed the way their eyes widened just before they turned away.
"Hey, I'm Mike." A man said sitting down beside Lila with a disarming smile.
"Lila." She replied extending her hand to him. He was certainly a handsome sort, late twenties or early thirties. He seemed to enjoy spending time in the gym judging by the way his shirt was straining to hold his chest in. Like her he was sweating and mottled gray shirt was just a few drops shy of transparency. "This your first time?"
"First time since I moved yeah." Mike replied.
"Oh, where from?" Lila asked turning towards him while she ate.
"Back east, it's a tiny little . . . it was a tiny little town." Mike shrank slightly. "Most of it burned late last year. We weren't allowed to cut the grass around our homes because of some stupid mouse or rat or something."
"Yeah we had something like that a few years back here too. For what it's worth I'm sorry." Lila winced a little inwardly. She always felt a little annoyed when she heard about people losing their homes because of some rodent or their livelihoods because of some fish.
"Yeah." Mike turned away slightly. "Anyway what brings you up here?"
Lila reached up pushing a few wet strands of her hair out of her face. "What can I say, I'm a true believer and I like to give back some of my time. I'm not going to bore you with a long story about this stuff."
Mike grinned. "Well thanks, there's nothing less sexy than someone spouting off a bunch of facts and figures that people can't even wrap their minds around." His tone changed into a mock professorial tone, "The number of water bottles thrown away each year could circle the Earth three times and there is a gyre, an island of trash twice the size of Texas floating in the ocean."
Lila giggled, then she laughed, and finally she snorted before stopping. "Well yeah, that's just pointless stuff. Though it is kinda scary that even after telling people that they still toss their shit around. I mean I'm not asking everybody to come up here and help clean up the forest or plant trees or clean up after oil spills. That shit's hard work. I don't think it makes me a bitch to think that if everybody just took their own trash down I wouldn't have to come up here and do it for them."
"Preachin' to the choir." Mike replied finishing his lunch and tossing it into his bag. "Well I gotta get back to work, there's still a lot to get wrapped up here before we head in and I hate leaving knowing I could have done more." Mike pushed himself upright and started walking away. "Oh, and I was wrong. You're kinda cute even when you're preaching about this environmental stuff."
"You think I'm cute?" Lila asked batting her eyes slightly.
"Kinda." Mike replied walking back to the edge of the work area.
The next several hours were filled with Lila and Mike very carefully not working together or even looking at each other directly all that much. It wasn't possible to tell which one of them was actually leading but without speaking the two of them somehow came to the conclusion that if he could see her shorts tight around and her ass and she could see his pecs stretching his shirt and they were both still picking up the increasingly sparse bits of trash as they got further and further from the established camp sites and trails.
Lila came to a stop when she came to the edge of Cherry Lake. She was in the middle of leaning over to pull a plastic bag from the waves when Mike moved behind her. "We're a little off the beaten path aren't we?"
