River Traditions
We might think of “tradition” as an unchangeable, old practice that has been going on forever, but the word comes from the Latin verb “tradere”, which means “to give”. Tradition is a practice that is passed down from generation to generation. Every community has its own set of traditions. They aren’t static, as one might think, they change, little by little, along with society. When celebrating a traditional practice, we are keeping our ancestors’ habits alive, making an active (even if unconscious) effort to get close to them. In this sense, traditions are about the past. Without the present re-enactment of them they wouldn’t exist, making traditions also about the present. Most importantly, traditions are primarily concerned with our future, for they represent what we want to pass on to future generations.
In our local community, we have a special tradition that has taken place every year for the last couple of decades. On the Friday before Memorial Day, we have the traditional Ocoee River Clean-Up. This cleansing process happens when the water is off, before the rafting season picks up. From Memorial Day until September, the river starts running five days a week instead of just on weekends. In order to start the amazing summer everyone expects, raft guides from all the different rafting companies as well as other members of the Ocoee community come together to clean the river and the road that borders it, U.S. 64. Each company is assigned to a specific part of the river and everyone that participates in the clean-up is invited for a food gathering later in the afternoon. There are prizes for the most out-of-the-ordinary trash collected by the volunteers.
It was my first time participating in the Ocoee River Clean-Up and we found a lot of cigarette butts, small pieces of plastic and a TV. Yes, someone threw away an old TV by the side of the road. That was unexpected and harder to carry than what we had found so far, but the object that caught our attention the most was a small, dirty looking, unusable, muddy lighter. It wasn’t the lighter itself that was special, but what was growing from the inside through a small space in between the plastic part and the top. A small and beautiful flower rose strong, upright, with new green leaves and a firm stem. Just like the lotus flower, this little flower was rising from mud, growing from adverse conditions. The lotus is a symbolic flower that represents new beginnings, strength, and overcoming adversities, and it’s captivating by its beauty. The flower we found, like the lotus, slowly surfaced from mud into clean air, transforming the way we looked at the lighter.
We kept the lighter with the flower, for it was the perfect metonym for what we were doing. Cleaning the muddy, trashy environment created by neglect and creating a new beginning to start the rafting season purified. The view from where we were to the river inspired us to keep it clean and although we were blessing the river with our traditional yearly clean-up, the river was blessing all of us with the power that lies in its serenity. We know that behind the peaceful still water in front of us, there is a powerful force of nature that creates rapids, hydraulics, eddies, and flowing currents. This allows us to give adventurous rides to thousands of customers per year. These trips are so much more than just adventures. They create stories which people can live and tell about the river we love and cherish. The river clean-up is a traditional ritual to gratify the Ocoee River, to get closer to the ones that came before us sharing the same love of the river, but most importantly, to make us wonder about the future of the Ocoee and what we should do in the present to give the river the future it deserves. Why do we litter so much? What habits should we change to protect what we (and/or other people) love?
What would you like to give to future generations?
By: Laura de Leers
