Earth Day was celebrated for the 51st
time last week. Since some our ancestors lost
their cultural celebrations of earth, water, sun and moon hundreds of years
ago, we tend to honour Earth on this one day of the year by keeping her free of
litter. Or, to say it less formally, we
pick up other people’s garbage and then send it to a landfill site. It’s ironic if you think about it but it’s a
start.
It’s all we have come up with so
far so it’s what we do. My partner picks
up garbage everywhere, on most days, as an act of reciprocity to Earth. He recycles what he can and green bags the
rest. So, it was fairly normal for us on
a lovely sunny Saturday morning to join our neighbours in a town wide Earth Day
clean up, socially distanced of course.
My partner and I chose to clean up the wooded area beside the post
office. We have noticed that no one
seems to care about the wooded areas that have no human residents and bits of
plastic and drink cans somehow end up in there.
This particular wooded area is
important to us because it is where we pick fiddleheads in the spring. So, our act of reciprocity to Earth for the
fabulous fiddleheads is to remove the toxic plastic and discarded metal that
have ended up on top of the Ostrich Fern mounds and around the tree trunks. At the side of the road under the sand that
was spread in the winter I found a small bag of household garbage. Maybe a snowplow was responsible? Surely no
one would throw that out of their car window.
However, judging by the plastic and paper cups at the side of the road, this part of town is roughly the distance from the take out restaurants
at the gas station that it takes a walking person to drink an Ice Cap, a coffee or a can
of pop.
On the evening before the big garbage clean up day, we had
tackled the little secluded beach that the teenagers frequent. We had previously noticed a huge piece of foam rubber
embedded in the sand. I guess teens like to be comfy in their seclusion. We came prepared with a wheelbarrow, shovel
and picaroon (lumbering tool). We dug
around the edge of the foam and tugged, dug some more and tugged some more but the thing
was anchored somehow. More digging and
tugging plus some huffing and puffing revealed a tree root the diameter of a
large carrot that had grown through the sturdy mesh around the foam. Chopping the root with the shovel in a few
places eventually freed the waterlogged foam which we manhandled into the
wheelbarrow. My partner wheeled that
barrow over sand, through the parking lot and up the hill to the garbage can by
the trail where we left it for the Township pick-up the next day.
On our way to the drop off point we
had noticed lots of bottles and cans floating in a large flooded area. Since my partner had worn his Wellies, in he
went with a bag to pick up the recycling.
I used another bag to pick up garbage from the edge and eventually the area was back to earth, water, mud and stones.
Lovely. I get very little
satisfaction from cleaning my home but seeing nature returned to beauty feels
really good.
After two bouts of roadside pick-up
on Saturday, we went to the water’s edge to relax. Our neighbours there, also in a spring
cleaning kind of mood were burning garbage in very smoky fires. The smell was unpleasant, so we decided to
take the canoe out for a paddle since the calm water was inviting and
blessedly smoke free. We had reached the
other side of the bay when my partner spied, you guessed it, more garbage. A huge piece of plastic which was half of a
dock floatation device was at the edge of the water. Using the boat hook, he dragged it over to
the canoe and propped it on the bow while I shifted my weight to counterbalance
the effort.
We paddled back to town and stopped
at the Government Dock where there is a public garbage can where my partner planned to
leave the big piece of black plastic. We
beached the canoe and he dragged it up the steep slope to the public area. It took a while for him to come back to the
canoe so I knew that there was a story there.
It turns out that a man who was fishing off of the dock told him he
couldn’t leave the plastic there. My
partner told him that it was clean up day in Waubaushene and that the township
was picking up the garbage. “Well,” said
the man, “I work for the township and they won’t want to pick that up. You can’t leave your garbage there!” My partner explained that it wasn’t his
garbage and that he had pulled it out of the water. “Do you want me to put it back in the water?” asked my partner. The man decided to back down and said that he
was only kidding. My partner returned to
the canoe shaking his head. “You don’t
expect to get yelled at for cleaning up,” he said.
But, it wasn’t all bad. Earlier in the week, spying a small shiny
piece of plastic in the ditch, my partner had clambered down the bank to
retrieve it. He was surprised to find
that it was a plastic twenty dollar bill!
Reciprocity of a kind I suppose.
He also found a sturdy steel pole from someone’s dock. We’re not sure how it got to the side of the
highway but we can repurpose it none the less.
I have had quite a lot of time to
think about picking up garbage recently.
I do it out of respect for Earth and as a form of reciprocity for all
she gives to us. And it seems to me that
it sends out a message. If garbage is
left lying around I think it attracts more garbage. It sends a signal that it is okay to “clean
out your car” at the side of the road. I
know that some people pride themselves on having very clean yards and cars and
then I see them throwing garbage elsewhere.
Perhaps it is the disconnect that they have with Earth – it is not their
responsibility and it is certainly not their mother. They only identify with their yard, car and
house, their private property. The
worldview of the individual has separated and isolated them. They don’t feel responsible for common space.
As we strode along the streets with
our green garbage bag and clear recycling bag, one woman called to us from her
yard. “Thank you,” she sang out. That felt good to be thanked. It felt perplexing to be yelled at
later. And when we took our last bag to
the growing pile of bags at the pick up point we felt we had been a part of
something good. We had been part of a
community of people who did care about common space and were willing to put that into action. They extended their idea of community to the Earth and its other-than-human life. All in all, we had a very happy Earth Day.
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