Roughly seventy people turned out for the fall cleanup along the lower river bank, the stretch below the old warehouse row that floods every spring and collects whatever the water leaves behind. By noon the pile of full bags looked like a small hill, and the county scale later put the haul at just over three tons.
Most of it was depressingly ordinary. Some of it was not.
The inventory, roughly sorted
Volunteers kept a running tally, part science and part disbelief, of what came out of the reeds.
- Hundreds of bottles and cans, the eternal baseline
- Two shopping carts, one still improbably shiny
- A car bumper, vintage uncertain
- A message in a bottle that turned out to be a grocery list from, by its prices, a very long time ago
The grocery list is now taped to the wall of the boathouse, which feels correct. A cleanup is supposed to be about removal, but the best ones are also a form of reading. Three tons of trash is a lot to carry. It is also, if you look closely, a record of everything the river has been asked to hold, and a decent argument for asking it to hold less.
Related: Neighborhood news · front-step gardens of Fairmount
Further reading: River restoration
