Perfect Timing
Garbage CrewIt takes a while before we start to see the garbage. A bottle here or there rests at the edges of the still-brown cattails and phragmites that line the waterway that meanders through the North Tivoli Bay. When I pull the canoe up onto the mucky embankment Susan Lyne gets out and from her standing perspective locates a half dozen more items that don’t belong, items made of plastic or Styrofoam,glass, metal. She scoops them up, along with a plastic turkey, and we jam everything into two bags, one in front of her son, Emmet, the other behind him. Emmet is our youngest garbage collector and while he showed a real talent on land, grabbing things with the garbage picker, he’s less excited about being in the canoe. “It’s dirty,” he explains.
Susan with treasures from the Bay
It’s hard to find a kid—a boy—who doesn’t like mud. But he’s right. The mud is dirty. Besides the fact that it is gooey and brown it smells slightly, that fermented pond smell that makes me so happy. But who knows what else is laced into that mud? If I thought too much about that, I wouldn’t get out of my boat. So the truth is, I’m happy Emmet is a young neat-freak and keeping his hands and feet inside of the wide metal canoe.
The sun beats down on us as we gather more things. We watch as Sheri takes on an enormous plastic tarp and drags it behind her kayak. Emily has a bag stuffed into the cockpit of her kayak. The Bland family—Avis, Celia and Alex—have scooped up a refrigerator. It’s hard to tell who has the best booty.
We are all cruising the North Bay on a Saturday late morning in search of garbage. It’s a great treasure hunt And the more we find, the more we find. It works like that. Our eyes adjust so that a glint is a bottle, a bump the edge of a barrel. There’s a general sense of excitement and an extreme sense that we are doing good work. Knowing that in the South Tivoli Bay, a group of Bard College students are cruising those waters Bard College students, gleefulcollecting their own garbage adds to the collective sense of purpose. And in a few weeks, with Riverkeeper's River Sweep, groups the length of the river will clean up. We will make this Hudson River cleaner. One small thing in a world that needs lots of small things.
Soon enough, Emmet doesn’t want to be on the water any longer. I’m impressed he made it as far as he did, but I’m sorry to lose my canoe partners. Just then, my phone rings and my friend Georganna calls to say she’s a half hour away. Perfect timing.
I drop off one set of partners and all of our loot and scoop up the next. That George is still fresh helps to give me some energy. We work our way around the circuitous water paths of the north bay, until we reach the wide bay by the railroad underpass. Everyone seems to have vanished, though I know Emily and Sheri are out here somewhere. We poke along, past the docks that washed into the bay after Hurricane Irene. Then we meander down one of the alleyways that run parallel to the train tracks.
I glance over my shoulder and see a plant I have never seen before. “What’s that?” George asks as I’m about to exclaim, “Golden Club.”
Golden clubThough I’ve never seen this plant before it is so distinct I know right away what it is. Brilliant yellow prongs, like a riding crop, emerge from green leaves. It’s a plant I have been looking forfor years.
I first read about Golden Club in Ester Kiviat’s book about the Tivoli Bays. She goes in search of this rare flower, with no luck. Her quest sent me on my own searches and every year I have come up empty.
What surprises me is how beautiful the yellows are in this flower. Practically neon in their brightness. I jump out of the canoe to take photographs of the flower. I’m dizzy with excitement. A golden club at last. And what are the chances? It’s a flower that blooms but a week every year—usually in May. Here it is, early in the season, and without searching, I found it. Perfect timing.
Georganna with a canoe-load of garbage
Before I get back in the boat, I pick up a hunk of Styrofoam and a can of soda, dented and filled with mud.