By Neva Knott

Easter, 2011. I traveled to Zihuatanejo to spend nine days by myself on a beach. I wanted to hear another language. I wanted to feel a different culture. I was in graduate school and bartending and burned out. I stayed at a little place called Treetops in a little palapa of a cabin. I spent most of my days on a beach chair under a palm-front umbrella, reading and napping and watching the ocean roll along.

Evenings, I walked the beach. One such evening, I followed the trash trail left by the last high tide and photographed it. The next morning the beach was clean again, the trash having been dragged into the sea. This problem is problem is not unique to Mexico–I found the same along the banks of the River Lee in Ireland when I ran there evenings in the summer of 2014.