As a teenage girl who had the house mostly to herself growing up, I always looked forward to my sister coming home from college. Bethany in particular. Celia, nine years older than me, was already well out of the house and living with her future husband by the time I was 10. Bethany, on the other hand, college hopped and finally landed on one 4 hours from home. She enrolled at Paul Smiths College in the Adirondacks, and most would say she was some sort of tree huggin’-Earth lovin’ hippie. She was an Environmental Studies major, who cocreated the organization called “Step it Up.” Her group of friends were committed to cleaning up and saving the planet. I remember her memorizing and preaching facts about how long it would take cigarette butts to decompose. Well over a year to be exact, and those stats came as a startling shock to me. Ones that I could never forget. Bethany was a rebel; paving the way for how so many of us think today, only she was thinking these ideas light years before. Before Earth Day became popular, Bethany was the one remembering to celebrate it. And not just once a year, but every day.
I remember when she would come home from college; wearing crowns of vines and flowers pinned up in her hair. She made necklaces out of shells, earrings out of pinecones. She shopped at only thrift stores, flaunting hand me down outfits made up of long skirts and colorful scarves. She traveled mostly barefoot, with the exception of moccasins. She looked like an Earth angel, the spirit of mother nature in human form. She had this green shoulder bag which fashioned pins of recycling signs and slogans such as, “Keep your butt off the grass,” (cigarette butt that is). Every time she came home, she brought a new energy. New ideas. New people.
One spring, Bethany brought her two girlfriends home for Easter dinner. Jenny and Korinna. I remember smelling their patchouli oil scent and noticing how they dressed like Bethany. I began to realize how different we as humans can be. They, like Bethany, were earth lovers, and together their crazy ideas manifested into one after dinner project. After they raided my parent’s plastic bag supply in the pantry closet, they hopped in the car and headed up to the main road. Of course I went with them. Any chance I had to hang out with the cool, older girls, I did. But little did I know that all along, we were going to pick up garbage.
We pulled on old winter gloves and began picking. Strolling along the roadside, bending down to any sight of garbage or piece of plastic. We picked up anything unnatural that didn’t belong beside the road. We picked up cans, cigarette butts, bottles, old CDs, leftover fast-food packages, losing lottery tickets. We filled one bag and quickly began to fill another. It was like a contest, trying to see who could fill their bag the fastest. Bethany always won. She was a fast picker, in the garden, along the road, in life. She came in first a lot, without even trying.
Some called it crazy. In fact, I even did at first. Who would ever imagine wearing your Easter best and picking up roadside litter after a lavish meal. But they, and eventually me, called it the change we wanted to see in the world. If Bethany and her college friends taught me one thing, it was to not ever be stuck, or try to fit, into a mold. They showed me how to break out and become someone I had never seen in myself before. They showed me how to get dirty. How that sometimes you must reach down and pick up the garbage along the road to spread the message. To show others that we are the ones that can only clean up the mess we’ve made. No matter how bad it is, no matter how deep down in the hole we are. At some point, we have to start taking responsibility for our actions. Sadly, not all of us will. But better some, than none.
As cars sped by, I prayed they got the message. To not litter. To not throw your trash in the grass. To never let pretty, hippy girls walk along the road and pick up the mess for you. I truly hoped our message was getting across to all of those who saw us. But more than the point we were trying to prove, something about that day and what we were doing, simply felt good. Picking up litter felt downright good. A pure act of kindness for Mother Earth. Not only were we picking up bagfuls of litter, but we were also making our neighborhood look that much better. That much more beautiful. That much cleaner. Who wants to see garbage lying along the road, crowding our drainage pipes, and peeking out of the grass? We for sure didn’t. And so that’s why we began to pick it up. To not put up with it anymore.
Fast forward 15 years. I’m living in Metro Detroit and don’t get me started with all the garbage laying around here. I thought the roadsides in my little hometown in upstate New York were bad, but the city streets in Detroit were 100 times worse. Cities tend to be hot spots for trash. I’m not lying. I could pick up a bagful of garbage and not even walk two steps on a Detroit street. Sickening and sad. That’s when I realized I had to do something more than just look at the situation with disgust. Spring came, and as Bethany always told me, it was the best time to pick up garbage. When the grass wasn’t yet long enough, and the world hadn’t fully bloomed. That’s when I grabbed a pair of blue plastic gloves, a couple of old grocery bags, and headed for the road. And that’s when I started picking. I started reaching down and picking it all up. Vodka shooters, Fireball bottles, plastic bags blown away. I filled one bag, two bags, three. I could have stayed out there all night and was quickly taken back to my sister’s college days and how they deeply impacted me. How they showed me how to care and clean up our one and only Earth. How it takes only one person, one young woman picking up trash along the road, to cause another young girl to do the same thing.
Not only did Bethany inspire me to start, she moved me to be the change I wished to see in the world every, single day.