One day, when I was about five and my sister seven,  the two of us were floating on an inflatable raft on Long Pond (Cape Cod). Our father sat on the tiny sand beach and watched. It was a lazy, quiet moment of drifting.

“Susie, it’s your duty to keep America beautiful,” Becky said.

And we continued to drift.

My father loved this story, perhaps because he thought Becky had made up this great line. I’m pretty sure Becky had pulled it from a TV ad, though we did not have a TV in our own house. He told the story over and over again, emphasizing how the comment seemed to come out of nowhere and Becky’s seriousness in delivering this mandate. Whether it came from Becky, or from hearing the story so many times, I have taken it seriously. It’s my job to keep garbage from ruining the beauty of the Hudson River and of the Tivoli Bays in particular.

So on May 9 at noon I joined Carol Lewis, Hudson kayaking enthusiast, her friend Nancy, Max Kenner, who is in charge of Bard’s Prison Initiative (BPI), his cousin Zach, who was a former student of mine and a current student, David Soffa. We gathered canoes generously loaned from Hudsonia stashed at the Bard Field Station. 

Two canoes headed out into the South Tivoli Bay, which at this time of the year is still free of the water chestnuts that will make it impassible come August. We picked up a few choice items before ducking onto the river to round Cruger Island and back into the North Bay. David rowed like a maniac to keep us on course and moving slower than my usual meditative pace. We stopped several times on Cruger to gather bottles, examine a large object, which is perhaps a part of an automobile, take photos of an unusual dead animal and enjoy the honeysuckle, the red columbine in bloom, and the wide open river.

At the dock, David headed back to campus while I donned my waders and shoved out with the boat one more time to sweep the north end of Tivoli Bay. The North Tivoli Bay is where I usually paddle—it is protected from the river because of the railroad tracks, and inside of the bay there is a rush of animal and bird life. At the same time, the stillness of the Bay is often otherworldly. Saturday it had that special texture of vibrant and calming at once. Looking for garbage in the reeds is like an Easter egg hunt for adults—you start to hope to find something. And there is always great glee in finding something original (that is, beyond a bottle). The odd doll, the tire to a bicycle. Searching is an art. With focus, I came to more easily see texture or the glint of light that alerted me to the presence of something unnatural.

The wind at my back, I coasted along, gathered up a tire, more bottles, and also scared off a few snapping turtles that were catching the sun that hovered behind clouds most of the day. On the return I battled the wind, unable to keep the canoe on course. At many points I ran aground, and at one moment struggled to keep from the shore because I would have collided with a snapping turtle (see photo).

In all, a great day—good people, good garbage.