Today is Earth Day. For years I have told myself that I participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. I joined an organized group of classmates and picked up trash in my Massachusetts hometown. I have always been proud of my participation, but as I sat down to write about it, I wondered how valid my memory was.
First I realized that I was 13 in 1970. A school-sponsored outing to mark Earth Day did not seem like the kind of thing that would have happened in my junior high school. It seems more likely that the outing occurred when I was a freshman in high school, in 1971.
Then there’s the problem of April vacation. In Massachusetts and Maine, spring break occurs at the time of Patriots’ Day. That occurs on April 19th, but since 1969, it has been celebrated on the closest Monday. Earth Day always falls during spring break in Massachusetts and Maine. I know this as I was a school librarian who yearned to celebrate Earth Day with my students for 32 years.
Then there’s this. I heard on the radio show “Living on Earth” that Earth Day was not envisioned as the yearly celebration it has become. This lends credibility to my notion that I participated in that first event, although it probably wasn’t on the actual day. Maybe the Saturday before?
Hmphh.
Well, that trash-collecting outing, whenever it was, has stuck with me all these years. And I know it was related to Earth Day. My group was dispatched to a bleak area underneath the Braga Bridge, a soaring span that connects the city of Fall River and the town of Somerset, where my family lived. The bridge crosses the Taunton River near where it connects with Mount Hope Bay.
I remember thinking at the time that I had no idea that Somerset bordered the bay. Of course I knew the bay—it extended along the west side of Fall River and the adjoining town of Tiverton, R.I., where my mother had grown up and some of her family still lived.
But this area was dominated by the coal-burning Brayton Point Power Plant. I had no reason to be down there in normal circumstances.
So I learned something new about my town that day. And that maybe I needed to be a bit more aware of my surroundings. I was proud, too, to be part of the effort, to be doing my part. I was appalled by the ugliness of the trash that had collected along the beautiful bay, and the specter of the power plant so close by.
The day helped me become an environmentally aware person as I grew into adulthood. There were other factors. My mother’s father had grown a big garden on an in-town lot in Tiverton, a couple of blocks from the bay. He was an inspiration to me. I have a photo of him, in his Boston cap and overalls, holding a basket of strawberries, on display. My father started growing vegetables in our backyard in the early ‘70s. and taught me what he knew.
I’ve been a gardener ever since, and have tried to be a good steward of the earth. I am not perfect by a very long stretch. But I have done my best to provide food, water and shelter for the critters who frequent my city yard; to plant for pollinators; and to reduce, reuse and recycle. Paul and I chose to live in a community that was close to our jobs, services and amenities, which kept our need to drive to a minimum.
What a wonderful surprise it was to learn, as I did my research for this piece, that the wider area where my group worked is now the Brayton Point Wildlife Management Area. I would love to see it some day. The plant closed in 2017 and a wind power facility is being developed on the site.
Progress!
I will continue to relish that mental image I have of my teenage self, picking up trash. I may not have all the details straight, but the inspiration endures. Cherish the earth.
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