While picking up trash at one of my favorite swimming holes during the Green River Cleanup, I thought to myself, “Gee, this is the first year I haven’t seen a single tire down here.”
I did find a couple interesting items — a criminal citation for drunken driving and an empty jailhouse property bag accompanied by an inventory slip listing “one eyebrow ring” as its sole contents.
After filling one trash bag and part of another, I headed back to my car to find a messier place to clean. The rest of my group was a little farther up the road. I parked and began picking trash off the top of the embankment, when one of them popped out of the woods.
“We’re going to need some help down bottom,” he said.
“What’s down there?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll see,” he said with a laugh. “I’m going to get more people.”
I peered through the woods, eventually finding a spot where I could see through the trees.
Tires. Lots of them. There were 76, to be exact, scattered along a flat spot just above the river. Between us, it was a plummet of more than 100 feet down a steep hill. It was clear someone had backed up and rolled an entire truckload down the hill.
I clambered down, the loose soil offering little purchase for my boot soles. I worked my way to the bottom, where I could truly appreciate just how many tires were there. Another volunteer had dragged the more wayward ones into the clearing.
He told me the team leader, tree-service owner Kyle Nartowicz, had taken his box truck home to pick up his wood chipper, which had a hydraulic winch.
We eyed the hillside and found a line through the trees where we could tow the tires uphill — likely the same route that was used to dump them in the first place.
We set to work rolling the tires into one pile at the bottom of it, and were joined by another volunteer. Waiting for the winch, we talked about how to go about dragging them up the hill. We settled on lashing them together, six or seven at a time. I headed back to my rig to get a length of chain for the job.
After I returned, more people started to arrive to help. While waiting for the winch, they rigged a rope to a tree by the road. Two at a time, they started pulling tires up the hill, with a team of people pulling from the roadside.
When Kyle came back with the winch, the real fun began. Even with a winch rated at several tons, the job still needed a lot of people power.
Two people lashed loads together at the bottom, another three worked the loads over a downed log halfway downhill and pushed them away from would-be snags above. Kyle worked the winch, and I spotted at the top, watching for snags or loosed stones. Once the loads reached the top, I unlashed them and helped bring them to the truck. By the time the rope made it back downhill, there was another load waiting.
Even so, it took hours. By 1 p.m., we had all the tires wrangled, and were hot, sweaty and ready to unload our haul. We got back to the Green River Swimming and Recreation Area, where other groups were already unloading.
After adding our tires to the growing pile and putting the other trash and recyclables in their place, we washed up and made our way to the free smorgasbord provided by area establishments. There was even cold beer, compliments of The Peoples Pint, which had made a special Source to Sea Pale Ale. It was named after the Connecticut River Source to Sea Cleanup, the larger effort of which our event was a part.
While it’s sad to see how much trash ends up in and around the river, it’s heartening to see that the piles get a little smaller every year — it makes me feel like we’re making a difference.