PORT ANGELES — Picky, picky, picky.
Uppy, uppy, uppy.
Julian McCabe walks the Waterfront Trail each day, literally picking-upping his way from a discarded tissue to an empty snack bag to a paper cup tossed aside.
“I’ve lived here all my life. I hate to see it dirty,” the 81-year-old retired paper millwright explains of why he stashes trash in the sack he carries.
The sun is barely up and the tide is barely out when McCabe leaves the home he’s owned since 1960 near Francis Street Park and takes to the trail. He’s followed the routine for two years.
Clad in low hikers, shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, he wears a belt pack he says holds dog treats. He carries a long-handled trash retriever, a plastic shopping bag that contains a plastic bottle, and gloves.
McCabe will spend the next hour scouring the trail and Hollywood Beach for anything that’s been misplaced and must be replaced in his bag, which he’ll have to empty twice before he returns home.
“You’d be surprised what you can find on this trail,” he said.
“It’s just amazing how many people just throw everything away.”
McCabe polices the path — part of the Port Angeles portion of the longer Olympic Discovery Trail — daily, walking from the park west to Hollywood Beach one day, from the park east to Ennis Creek the next.
On a recent late-July morning, the tidal flats emit a sulfurous odor that still can’t hide the rich aroma of McCabe’s cigar.
“I always say, ‘Hi,’ to everyone on the trail, and they always say, ‘Hi,’ back as a rule. They see me with my cigar. If I don’t have my cigar they say, ‘Where’s your cigar at?’”
Today McCabe will greet several bicyclists, runners and walkers, including a man with a sleeping baby held in a halter against his chest. Everyone seems glad to see him.
While McCabe greets all comers, his attention is focused on the ground.
“I’ve found a lot of needles. I put them into a plastic bottle. I take it up to the doctor’s office, and they dispose of it for me.”
His six-block meandering stroll produces more trash than treasure, although he occasionally finds something valuable.
“I’ve found a few nickels and dimes and quarters. I have found some cell phones. I turn those in [as found property to police].
“I collect aluminum cans and then sell them; then my wife (Maureen, to whom he’s been married 59 years) gives the money to Habitat for Humanity or her church.
“I’ve found some things I think were stolen items. I’ve found backpacks. I actually found some beer cans that were full of beer.”
Some discoveries give cause for pause.
“I’ve found partial swimming suits. I found the top and the bottom in different places.”
McCabe stops to remove a 6-inch-long twig from the pavement, a small thing but one that could trouble a bicyclist.
He’s removed much larger obstacles.
“I have come down here with my quad (small all-terrain vehicle) and my chainsaw and sawed away a tree that was in the way.”
For tasks like that, he first gets the city parks department’s permission. But he said he didn’t seek approval for one runner’s request after last winter’s snowfall.
“It kind of tickled me: A jogger who knew I have a quad asked, ‘Can you make some tracks so we can jog?’”
The snow stayed trackless.
McCabe sets a brisk pace and doesn’t hesitate to clamber into a ravine to retrieve a piece of paper or to scramble up the riprap at Hollywood Beach.
This day, he doesn’t encounter the canine friends who know he carries dog treats.
“A couple of dogs, they see me, and their people have to hold them back; they’re just straining to come to me.”
McCabe has spotted sea otters and seals, and many raccoons have crossed his path.
Then there’s the unidentified animal by whose burrow he once found an empty bottle.
McCabe placed the bottle far back in the hole.
“Next time I came back, it was out on the edge again. So I put it back. It’s happened about six, eight times.
“Whatever lives in that hole doesn’t like that bottle. It’s a contest between it and me.”
He won’t trifle with cigarette butts, not that they’re too small.
“I can grab a needle with these darned things (his giant tweezers), but if [smokers] can’t pick up their own cigarette butts, I’m not going to pick them up for them.”
By now he has snared a large beverage cup with plastic lid and straw, several scraps of paper, a plastic spoon, a length of golden ribbon, and a single toddler-size white sock.
He’s also picked up a piece of paper that bears a message starting, “Hi, John!”
Whether John ever got the note or threw it away remains unknown.
It’s still shy of 8 a.m. when he finishes his route. The MV Coho ferry is rounding Ediz Hook on its run from Victoria. A gaggle of Canada geese takes flight from the water for reasons only the honking birds understand.
Once a scuba diver, McCabe says he speared lots of lingcod for his family’s dinner table.
He also retrieved the bodies of drowning victims from Port Angeles Harbor, Lake Sutherland and Neah Bay.
“It wasn’t pleasant, but I know if it were one of my kids, I’d want them found.”
Now, McCabe enjoys the little adventures, the minor mysteries, the tiny treasures that brighten his daily ramble, but he recalls one encounter that was deadly serious.
McCabe says he came across a young lady several months ago who’d slit her wrists with a shard of glass. He called 9-1-1, and firefighter/paramedics rushed her to Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles.
“Later I got a call: ‘Is this the person who . . .
“I said, ‘Yes.’
“Then the dispatcher told me, ‘She says thank you.’
“That’s all I ever knew.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
