On a usual Saturday morning, I would slumber until 8:30, roll over, glance at the clock, and roll back over, but September 16 was not a normal sleep-in for me. I awoke at the sound of my mother’s call and dressed myself rather quickly. My friends, the Horchler family, picked me up, we ate breakfast together at Bojangles’, and not long after, we left for Lake Cherokee to meet the Green Teens who planned to pick up litter around the water.

We arrived well on time for an instructional sitting under a shed of picnic tables. It was just a little after nine o’clock, and no one else was there but the members of the Green Teen and ourselves. It was my first visit to Lake Cherokee. I averted my gaze from the tempting view of the lake reflecting the blinding sun rising over the horizon; my friend and I decided to stand on a quaint wooden dock behind a stranger with two poles drooping lines in the water. We probably disturbed his quietude and scared away his catch, yet he never looked back at us once, just leaning on the wooden rails and shooting the breeze as impetuous youths do.

Mrs. Tindall, leader of the Green Teens, provided snacks, water, orange vests, hand sanitizer, collection bags, and garbage bins. She welcomed us volunteers for the good work ahead and took attendance of the Team members and the rest. We split into collection groups headed into the surrounding wood while the leaders remained to sort the garbage for recycling. Mrs. Tindall kept a careful catalogue of every piece of scrap and rubbage for purposes of the litter pick-up program.

I, along with a friend, found all kinds of junk by the lake, from twenty-year-old beer bottles to socks, from ant-riddled mattress frames to fishing rods, from food plates to old cans of bait, and from plants growing inside bottles stuck in the ground to plastic bags. Like an archaeological dig, the excavation led to echoes of what the lake had seen in its past, lots of carousing and fishing, the worse and the better. It was a big lake with whole plots riddled with disgusting litter, a pristine landscape serving as a dump. We most likely just scratched the surface of a greater mess.

For three hours, we labored under the newly risen sun. More fishermen had made camp for the morning, nice people, the better of what the lake had witnessed. Several of them thanked us and even one lady took a picture of some of the Green Teens in their orange vests.

After all of our satisfying work, we bade our fellow tree-huggers adieu and then slurped milkshakes at Cookout.

I think that what we did that day was more than just a menial odd job. It signified the shared lot that is our responsibility to the earth, the environment, ourselves, and our posterity. Members of the Green Team wear a funny-looking shirt that states “there is no Planet B,” and I bet that is quite possibly the best quirky message printed on a shirt. I admire the mission of the Green Team, its members, and its sponsor, Mrs. Tindall; furthermore, I would like to thank them for the lasting lesson in which I partook.