For this week’s Joy Beat , we’re heading to the Cape — diving straight into a story about how a group of retirees decided that their golden years would be spent not just enjoying the waters but saving them.
Meet the self-proclaimed Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage — OLAUG , for short. While most people think of retirement as a time to relax, these women have channeled their energy into cleaning up Cape Cod’s freshwater ponds.
With snorkels, wetsuits and a zest for life, this week’s Joy Beat honorees are proving the power of collective action and the unexpected joys of picking up trash at the bottom of Cape Cod’s freshwater ponds.
Susan Baur, head of the operation, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share more about the “Old Ladies” and the invaluable work they do for the environment. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: Tell us the story of OLAUG’s founding and how you decided to take the plunge.
Susan Baur: Most people think they already know the answer to that question, which is: I’m supposed to be swimming around the pond, I see too much trash one day, and I think, “This is terrible!” And then, I started cleaning it up.
But that’s not at all the way it started. The way it started was that I swam for actually 18 years with turtles — pond turtles, snapping turtles, painted turtles, musk turtles. I was obsessed, because all of my troubles went away when I saw a turtle. I was a perfect person in a perfect world, and all was well. That’s really an important part of the back story.
That’s what really powers the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage — that if you get a bunch of people into a situation where you are wonderstruck by the natural world and are doing something to help it, you get that “I am a perfect person in a perfect world, I’m exactly where I want to be” [feeling]. That turns you into a confident, joyful warrior for the planet, and that’s really the driving force behind OLAUG.
One day, when I was swimming around, I thought, “I rather like these small bits of trash because it tells me exactly where I am in the pond. But there’s too many of them.” Three of us grabbed a guy in a kayak and said, “Follow us,” and picked up like a bushel of trash. We thought that was hot stuff!
Now, we pick up two to three hundred pounds out of a pond — stuff that’s been left there for 200 years. So we have everything from really, really old beer bottles, golf balls, plastic bags, plastic everything, lawn ornaments, kids’ toys, dog toys, always a fishing pole, very frequently a tire. Sometimes, a tractor tire! That takes four women. There is almost nothing that three or four women cannot do.
But what makes it really unusual is that this is an environmental service that everyone who does it wants to do more of. Everybody who hears about it wants to join us. It’s the joy that makes us feel so good. We want to help everyone. That is at the center of what we do.
Rath: I love the story of the personal, vital connection with nature that inspired all of this, but you found very quickly that that was something that — well, it’s a very personal story, but this wasn’t just you. It was pretty infectious.
Baur: Yes, that’s a perfect word. The joy is infectious, and I don’t think it comes from me. The enthusiasm may be, but I watch the people who have joined our group, and there are 30 of us now, and the job now is to start other chapters throughout Massachusetts and, frankly, throughout the country and maybe the world. We’ve gotten requests from all over. But the infectious enthusiasm comes from the beauty of the natural world.
Rath: Take us through a day spent cleaning a pond. How many participate generally, and what kind of trash do you find?
Baur: Oh Lord — it’s actually a bit more complicated than it looks. And that is [because] every pond we clean, we have to scout first. We have to make sure that the water is clear enough that we have enough backup and investment from the community.
So we scout the pond, and we swim along, and we see lumber, garbage cans, golf balls, fishing and a blue porcelain toilet — this is the mother lode! This is wonderful, and we’re going to do this.
Then, we have to find the pond coalitions, and sometimes we have to go to the beach and say, “Excuse me, do you guys belong to some kind of organization?” so that they see this stuff coming out of their pond.
But also, we do require a certain kind of unusual payment: cookies, homemade cookies. Whether it’s 10 of us, 20 of us, or all 30 of us — we work for cookies. And the colder the water, the more coffee and hot chocolate you’ve got to bring with it.
So then, once we have a sufficient amount of garbage, then we have a sign up and people scramble to get on the big ponds and the ones with the big garbage. That’s what we all like because it is such a challenge, and we bring up stuff that we don’t even know what it is! I mean, it’s wonderful.
Then, we have a leader, and they say, “Here are the teams. I’m sending these two excellent swimmers across the pond. Another two will go across and turn the other way. Other ones will just swim half a mile and start collecting. Others will start collecting right away.”
As you can see, we’ve got excellent swimmers. You’ve got to be able to swim for 60 to 90 minutes, and you do get cold. You can’t wear too much wetsuit, or else you’ll float so high you can’t get down and take the trash.
But [trash] isn’t all we see — that may be what we’re focused on, and all our personal concerns are out of our heads because we’re focused on what we’re trying to find: that telltale straight line, that telltale blue or red that shouldn’t be at the bottom of a pond. I once found a sink — a cast iron sink. With a bunch of people, we got it out.
So then, we’re taking all this garbage out. The kayakers, who are also our communicators, put their paddles up high, blow their safety whistles and say, “Everybody return!” It’s so hard to stop. We get into arguments about stopping — you know, “Stop diving!” But you just see garbage, and you have to do it. It’s like picking blueberries, I guess.
And then, we all come back to a road next to the pond, and then the DPW or the normal trash collection comes and gets it. Then, we eat cookies and drink hot cocoa and coffee and are just triumphant. It is such a wonderful feeling, and I can watch as these people come into the group and at first, they think, “This is a treasure hunt. This is exciting. I am exploring.”
After about two or three dives, they come out of the water and say to absolutely nobody in particular, “My God, that was fun!” So that was terrific. And I think to myself, you just drank the Kool-Aid. You are now on the side of the planet, and nothing is going to stop you.
If you’d like to nominate someone or something for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at 617-300-BEAT [2328].
