A group from Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship poses with the trash they collected from the Ottaquechee River near their church.
The tail slap of a beaver kicked off the first river-clean up, and a bottle in the shape of a flamingo became a figurehead for the second. These are two of the “treasures” Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Church, Taftsville, Vt., discovered while serving the Ottaquechee River, just a quarter mile from their church.
The congregation held two river clean-ups in response to Mennonite Creation Care Network’s summer 2018 river challenge. The first was geared toward walkers and involved a river road. The second was geared toward paddlers.
“None of us were previously aware there was a neighborhood beaver,” Heather Wolfe, Taftsville’s creation care liaison reported. They shared the river with painted turtles and saw an eagle as well.
Melissa, a kayak enthusiast, scouted different stretches of the Ottaquechee River in preparation for the Taftsville clean-up.
Lynda (an artist who lives next to the Ottaquechee) created a collage of the river with young helpers Norah and Helen. The collage is made of repurposed paper and the frame was salvaged from the dump.
Jane scrambles down a steep, poison ivy invested river bank to harvest litter on a landside leg of Taftsville’s river clean-up.