Volunteers hit Nelson for annual trash walk

Erin McGrath
Published: April 1, 2008

By 9:30 a.m. on March 29, 12 people had signed up to pick up trash with Keep Nelson Beautiful along Oak Ridge Road in Nelson County.

Eleanor Amidon of Afton was the 13th person to put her name on the list.

Armed with an orange vest and hat, brown, duct-taped leather gloves, goulashes and a potato hook, Amidon set out.

“I do it just about everywhere I go,” Amidon said. “I used to live in Virginia Beach and along the ocean front there’s always trash to pick up there.”

Amidon, 62, began on the south side of Oak Ridge Road, just before Wilson Lane and filled her first bag of trash in half an hour.

Less than 20 feet later down the road, she had her second bag full.

“You can tell some of this has been here awhile because the Styrofoam and plastic crumbles when you pick it up,” Amidon said as she used the potato hook to stab an empty beer can half-covered by leaves before depositing it in her bright orange bag.

Amidon used the farm tool for balance on the uneven ground, to pick up hard-to-reach pieces of trash and to pick up trash without bending over.

Some of the trash is visible in the underbrush that has yet to bloom, others, Amidon found by stepping on.

A tell-tale crunch underneath her black knee-high boots yielded at least three of the 48 plastic drink bottles Amidon picked up.

The potato hook also found trash, helping Amidon to discover two old milk jugs that a tree sapling had grown over.

“I’m going to try and give Mother Nature a hand,” Amidon said as she tugged the white plastic jugs from a tree.

Almost two hours later, Amidon’s stretch of Oak Ridge Road was clean. She’s filled three bags with pieces of plastic, metal, cardboard, beer bottles, soda cans, a dirty diaper, discarded fast food wrappers, pieces of Styrofoam and disposable cups.

Amidon was one of 20 people who helped clean up the Nelson roadside on March 29, filling 85 bags with trash.

This is the third year Keep Nelson Beautiful has sponsored the March on Nelson.