Leave nothing but footprints

The Mountain Man dragged us to a dam at the local river (Cape Fear) this weekend. By drag, I mean that the kids were buzzing with excitement and I was filled with dread and anxiety.

The River. For the MM, the river conjures up his Tennessee mountain memories of the Emory River and his MaMaw, who taught him to sit quietly for hours as that river's water lapped his feet, to patiently cast and re-cast as he sat on the shore or waded in to his thighs. He learned to swim in the Emory, spent long days drifting on makeshift rafts from one house to the next and the next until he was so far downstream someone had to go pick him up. In the days before his father died, my MM sat with him on the banks of that same river.
For him, a river is home and memory and tradition. He named our daughter after that river of his childhood home. And when he dies, he wants to be scattered into that same river.

For me? The river does bring up murky memories of fishing with my Papa (twice, and one of those times, he made my sisters and I sit at the shore while he paddled away in a boat to a quieter spot). However, the river holds many more unwelcome memories. Drunks who don't have the gas money to get to the lake. Trashy, uneducated people who cuss like sailors, smoke and drink to excess, and destroy everything in their paths. Nasty smells, filthy sights, and a wasteland of debris.

But who am I to deny my MM his day at the river? Especially when he packed up the cooler all by himself, spent an hour finding the exact spot of a dam he'd heard about, and then loaded everything into the truck by himself. I finally put on my swimsuit and climbed into the passenger seat determined to keep a positive outlook.

And I'm glad I did. While Bella and I would be content never going to the river again, our boys were in love. They splashed across the broken mussel shells and sharp-smooth river rocks until they were right on the dam. And then they climbed and slid and climbed some more. They frolicked and indulged our pig-tailed sprite and begged me to at least try the "dam slide" (which sent Javi into fits of giggles each time he heard or said it).





I made it halfway to the dam before I gave up and turned back. My once-hardened-by-the-country feet are not what they once were and couldn't suffer through the pain of trudging across the river bottom. But my time there wasn't wasted. I was right about the destruction "river people" leave in their wakes.

My family played; I cleaned. Beer bottles and cans, plastic plates and cups, fast food and styrofoam containers, paper and plastic bags, candy wrappers, old socks, a pair of ripped men's underwear. You name it and I found it down at the river.
And as I cleaned, a river dog came over begging for food. Of course I fed her everything we had. I felt almost purposeful in my work, and when the family came in from playing, they, too, picked up the purpose and ran with it. I don't have to tell you how they felt about the dog, right?
When we left, we took away 4 plastic grocery bags of trash. Despite our children's best efforts, we did not take away the river dog. But we did leave with a lesson in our hearts. We may not be the bad kind of "river people," but we do carry a river in our hearts. It is clean and safe and beautiful.
We will keep returning to ensure "our spot" remains that way. If we don't, who will?*Next time, we hope to take nothing but photographs but we'll be bringing trash bags just in case.

*Please tell me you will. Tell me that when you see the end result of laziness and disrespect for our natural resources, you'll take 10 minutes to grab a bag and just clean it up. Because a broken beer bottle and a candy wrapper on the bank of the Cape Fear can become so much more once it hits the water. You're with me, right?

***This post is part of the 30-minute blog challenge and ShoutLaughLove.***