An unforgettable year for Earth Day
- col-karen-gotter
- April 29, 2020
- 886
By the time this article gets to print, two milestones (that you’ve undoubtedly heard a lot about) will have come and gone.
The first is the 50thanniversary of the first Earth Day, which is traditionally marked by communities getting together for river clean-ups, recycling days and tree-planting ceremonies, all of which were put on hold this year due to the infamous second milestone: the one-month mark since the Ohio stay-at-home directive was issued by our governor in an effort to reduce the deadly effects of a novel coronavirus.
My mother was 16 in 1970, the year of the first official Earth Day. Her Girl Scout troop participated in the festivities by planting trees near Cuyahoga Falls, her hometown. That day wasn’t quite as memorable as her experiences later that summer when she and her fellow Scouts joined the ongoing clean-ups in the Cuyahoga River.
The year before, that river became famous across the nation when it caught on fire for the umpteenth time, which led to national efforts targeting water quality. Local groups targeted problems other than the flammable pollutants in the river. Instead, they focused on trash pickups, logjam removal and education efforts to get the community to care for its local resources. Sounds pretty familiar 50 years later.
Mom eventually went to work for the Ohio Division of Forestry and at one point was sent to investigate a grassfire that had gotten out of control. After meeting and discussing the relevant points to that situation, a light bulb clicked on, and the landowner realized she had been part of the same clean-up crew tackling logjams on the Cuyahoga some 20 years earlier.
Apparently she was a natural at using a chainsaw (which I think is saying something for a city girl in her teens and what chainsaws looked like 50 years ago), and the memory of them doing their own small part to tackle such a herculean task stuck with them both for decades.
I can think of some pretty recent examples of communities stepping up in the face of a monumental task and am so proud to witness friends and neighbors doing what they can to help mitigate a problem not of their making.
How many thousands of masks were created in the last month because of the creative minds and fabric stashes of ladies across Ohio? How many local businesses retooled within days to fill the dearth of hospital supplies so desperately needed across the nation? Who hasn’t celebrated the efforts to keep children and families fed during this time of insecurity?
We have a lot to be proud of, and I am grateful some of the responses to this “novel” virus have been novel approaches and new outlooks about prioritizing what we truly value. Most importantly it’s forced us to at least think about the consequences our actions have on our family, friends and even complete strangers.
I see a lot of parallels between the struggle to adapt and overcome the issues presented by coronavirus and the issues Earth Day tries to remind us of. Here in Holmes County we may be sheltered from the effects of smog-ridden cities and are fortunate to have abundant, clean drinking water. We know that isn’t the case everywhere and that there are monumental tasks that must be addressed to clean up some of our own problems.
The list of actions and changes that could be adapted locally is too long to list here, and only you know what steps you are willing and able to make to relieve the burden on our natural resources and leave our children and grandchildren a similar lifestyle and landscape as the one we have enjoyed.
Who knows? Maybe your actions today will be celebrated as widely as the revival of the Cuyahoga River, one of the greatest environmental challenges and successes of the century. My mom’s story isn’t remarkably different from the rest of ours: All our small efforts add up. We don’t know what will come of our efforts, but we should still try. We’re all in this together.
Here’s to making every day, Earth Day.