More than an ordinary college day

As far as I knew, it was just another day.

But the posters around campus insisted it was something special, something important.

The posters said it all had to do with something called the environment, something I wasn't particularly familiar with.

After all, I was an English major. That meant I carried around in my brain such job skills as being able to scan the meter in a line of poetry or extrapolate upon the pastoral tradition in literature through the ages. (Both of which have proved, of course, to be invaluable in this thing we call "the real world.")

My interest in science had peaked about fourth grade, when Paul Macklin's classroom at Judge Haynes Elementary School was home to snakes, hamsters, and - most memorably - a blue jay with an injured wing that I had picked up one morning on the way to school.

That interest began to lag about the time we had to collect insects for Billy Norris's biology class in ninth grade. And by the time I took Ralph Settle's chemistry class, I knew I wasn't set out for a career in a lab coat. The failing wasn't Mr. Settle's; it was mine.

A geology class in college had simply confirmed what I already knew. I had hoped that geology would be different. But every time I looked at a rock, all I saw was a rock. I could describe it in terms of color or shininess, but the darned thing would never open its secrets to me.

So, that spring, when the posters started appearing on campus, it would have made sense for me to ignore them.

But there was this girl.

She was a biology major. And we had met just about two weeks before the event being announced on the poster.

We were still in the tentative stage, trying to figure out the relationship. But something was happening, and we both knew it.

So when she suggested that I pay attention to the posters and join her that April day on an environmental work project, the thought of saying no never passed through my mind.

Sunny spring day with a girl I was extremely interested in. So what if it had to do with science and this thing called the environment, I was up for it.

Romantic would never be the way to describe the day.

Instead, it was muddy, dirty, and sometimes disgusting.

Our date, if you could call it that, involved being part of a crew trying to clean up a ditch with the far-too-optimistic name of Clear Creek.

We picked up pop cans, we picked up beer bottles, we picked up plastic bags, we picked up the plastic things that hold six-packs together, we picked up litter and more litter.

It was a long day, and at the end of it - English major that I was - I was foolish enough to think that it was all over.

This Earth Day thing had happened. We'd cleaned up Clear Creek. We were sweaty and full of righteousness.

And then the girl explained that this was just the beginning.

Clear Creek would be befouled again before we knew it if someone didn't do something to prevent the flood of detritus into its stream.

Earth Day wasn't an event. It was a beginning.

That was 41 years ago, which astonishes me on this Earth Day 2009.

It also astonishes me that the girl who taught me the meaning of the event saw enough merit in an English major to marry me three years later.

What does not astonish me is that, when it comes to the environment, I'm still learning from her to this day.[[In-content Ad]]