“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), American author, naturalist, and philosopher
 

Christine Spielvogel. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

You might think that the anti-pollution TV ad campaigns of the 1970s—“Give a Hoot–Don’t Pollute” (Woody Owl), or the crying Indian making his way by canoe up a trash-filled river—would have been enough to make people stop littering, and to teach their children to do the same. And with today’s focus on recycling, reducing carbon footprints, and living green you might wonder, “Who litters anymore?” But talk to Christine Spielvogel of Trail Ridge Way, and she’ll tell you lots of people do—right here in Harvard.

At 71, a fitness-minded Spielvogel took to walking this winter to help in her recovery from a recent hip replacement. The 22-year Harvard resident, who moved to her new townhouse in February from her longtime home on West Bare Hill Road, started walking along Littleton County Road and the nearby access road to Cisco Systems, Inc. in Boxborough. As the snow began to melt, she was horrified to see all the trash along the roadside. And because she didn’t want to look at it, she picked it up.

“If it’s not a rock or leaf or wood, it shouldn’t be there,” she said.

And she kept picking it up—and continues to pick it up.

Spielvogel said she has found bushes full of plastic and paper, beer bottles, cans, and fast-food wrappers. Her twice- or three-times-weekly 5-mile walks, which have taken her to the Littleton town line, along Old Schoolhouse and Old Littleton roads, and down Pinnacle and Poor Farm roads to name a few, have yielded an enormous amount of trash. She said that picking up the trash has become an obsession with her, and she now goes on her walks equipped with trash bags, garden gloves, and a long-handled grasper, to reach for the refuse hiding in poison ivy.

She said that during a walk on Old Schoolhouse Road to the old library she made little piles along the road, to pick up later.

“It was bad, but not as bad as Littleton County Road,” she said.

Near the sportsman’s club on that road she found a considerable amount of trash, she said, and once stopped someone coming out of the club to ask that he remind fellow club members not to litter.

Elsewhere along Littleton County Road Spielvogel has found such prizes as large wine bottles, hard liquor bottles, juice containers, cigarette cartons, and 11 small tires, such as might go to a small recreational vehicle. In her travels she has even found two rusty propane tanks, tire rims, hub caps, and a computer. She said the litter seems to be especially bad along stretches of road where there are no houses.

Christine Spielvogel sorts through a pile of trash picked up along a quarter-mile section of Pinnacle Road. She bags the trash and later picks it up on her way to the transfer station. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

During March and April Spielvogel brought home the bags of trash she collected on her walks and stored them in her garage until she could make her weekly trip to the transfer station. One Saturday, she said, she had to make two trips—with her car filled to the roof both times. She has taken five such loads to the transfer station so far.

Spielvogel said her roadside cleanup “snowballed and became a mission.”

“When I drive now, all I see is trash,” she said.

Lest you think that what she’s finding must surely represent years of accumulation, Spielvogel said she continues to find trash in places she’s already cleaned up once.

“The first was a big cleanup,” she said. “Now it’s just maintenance.”

Spielvogel has done an initial cleanup on Pinnacle Road to Littleton Road, and has discovered a need for cleanup at the intersection of Poor Farm Road and Route 111. It seems no place is immune from litter. She said she even found a soiled diaper left in the parking lot at the post office—even though there was a dumpster nearby.

“I’m so appalled at the amount of trash being left around here. I’m concerned about the environment and the mindlessness of dumping trash along the roadside,” she said. “I really feel it’s thoughtlessness—people don’t even bother thinking about what they’re doing.”

She commented on the “incredible number” of plastic water bottles she’s found along the roads, and wondered, “Are they from walkers?”

Spielvogel said she became so upset with the trash she was finding that she recently took a five-week T’ai-chi class, “meditation in movement,” to help her get rid of her anger about it. Now, she said, she tries to send out blissful thoughts when picking up trash—“May you become enlightened.”

But she’s still concerned about where it all will lead.

“We live in a beautiful country with exceptional diversity in its beauty,” she said. “We’re all responsible for this Earth and what it looks like in the future. What we’re doing to this planet is just horrendous.”

She said she hopes more people will see it as part of their duty to keep the town beautiful, to keep America beautiful.

“If everybody helped a little, it would be even more beautiful. I can’t do it all by myself,” she said, adding “it’s really getting trashed up.”