Local History by Dede Terns-Thorpe - Earth Day

The 56th annual Earth Day was held on April 22, 2026. It is a day founded to promote environmental awareness, by former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson.

The local Mountain Top Progressives (MTP) launched the 1st Town of Hunter Earth Day in 2018 and through last year (as COVID allowed). This year, the Mountain Top Library organized the free event (with a little help from the MTP) and will host it annually going forward.

Thank you to the library staff and our amazing Librarian Jackie Elmo for a wonderful day. The town’s Earth Day began at 9:00 a.m. at the Fromer Farm with a program by Cornell Cooperative Master Gardeners, before moving over to the library. 

 Looking around the large room filled with smiles and a  set-up with informational tables manned by numerous non-for-profit volunteers, a fund-raising bake sale (busy, successful, and delicious), free garden seeds, small trees, tomato plants, environmental talks, art projects, Mellow the Owl, crafts including flower sculptures. and a wonderful talk on the rock walls found in our wooded areas was presented by Artist Matthew Bua. Closing the day was a great hands-on show by “The Birdman”, Robinson’s Wildlife Show.

Earth Day has given me, and I’m hoping for most of us, an idea of the needs our earth deserves: recycling, encouragement of pollinators, no-mow May, environmental awareness, protecting our forest land, and many other earth-saving needs.

It’s amazing, but the trees we strive to protect today, pre-awareness of the damage, was one of the culprits that gave us the need for Earth Day. Tanneries damaged the earth by dumping chemicals and pesticides into our water systems, hurting humans and animals, the soil and the echo systems.

The forest built up our communities by supplying well-paying jobs, but long hard, dangerous months of working in the forests.

Meanwhile, it was the Mountain Top people that were also responsible for the necessary future Earth Day. Hotels and boarding houses sprang up throughout the Mountain Top, years prior to the arrival of the railroads. The hotels added to the waste materials found in the towns. This, of course, was prior to the efficient water and sewage systems we have today. State audits shamefully explained our need for sanitation improvement.

Earth Day also reminds me to complete another item from my Bucket List; as I drastically dislike litter, make a bumper sticker that says, “if everyone picked up one piece of litter a day we might cure the world of litter.”

Thanks for reading. Be well, stay safe, and be careful.

Dede Terns-Thorpe/Town of Hunter Historian