Every afternoon on my scheduled days, I have been picking up litter on the beach. Outfitted with an industrial strength grasper and a white 30 gallon garbage bag, I comb the beach between the lifeguard towers. Usually, I find plastic bottles, plastic remnants, plastic bags, cigaret butts, dog shit, broken toys, broken flip flops, ketchup packets, beer cans and bottles, and the occasional dead creature.
On April 22, Earth Day, I was doing litter patrol when a little boy walked up to me and asked what I was doing. I told him I was picking up trash, trying to keep the beach clean. I let him use the grasper to pick up a large piece of expanded polystyrene and deposit it in the bag. I told him he had now done something good for the environment on Earth Day and I thanked him for doing so. He hung around for a while then disappeared as I meandered down the beach.
Today, a woman came to the campsite inquiring about firewood. As she was leaving, she said yesterday her 5 year old grandson returned from having used the trash grasper and said it was Earth Day. He told her he had learned about Earth Day at school. He asked whether they could pick up trash. He had a plastic beach toy, like salad tongs, and used it to collect some trash. The woman said he wanted to remove a dead pelican he had seen near The Boneyard, but she dissuaded him from going that far up the beach. She added that he is an inquisitive child of whom she is quite proud.
I thanked the woman for telling me about the boy. I told her that I had no idea that our brief encounter would result in stirring him to action on his first Earth Day at the beach. "Cool, very cool," I said.
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