Work has been keeping me a little too busy, but I finally have time to describe the trip to the Nantucket dump….

It was Alyzza’s idea to go to the dump on Nantucket Island. “It’s the best dump in the world,” she said.

On Friday, two members of our youth group, Danielle and Jarrod, met Emma and me at the church; Alyzza was going to meet us on Nantucket, where she was playing in a lacrosse game with her school. We left New Bedford at 3:18, leaving, we thought, plenty of time to drive out Cape Cod and get to the ferry terminal in Hyannis. But we got lost, and the wrong turns became nightmarish. Finally we were there with only minutes to spare; Emma dropped us off so I could buy the tickets; one last late couple came after us, delaying the ferry just long enough; Emma had to run the last hundred yards. The ferry left at 4:46, a minute late.

Dani and Jarrod had never taken the ferry over to Nantucket. Jarrod said, “I’m going to stay on deck the whole time, I’m not going to waste the trip sitting inside.” We followed his lead, and all stood out in the sun and the cold wind watching Cape Cod recede and Nantucket loom closer in the haze. At last we were in the harbor, rounding Brant Point. I pointed out the gold-topped steeple of the Unitarian Universalist church where we would be spending the night.

We met the Nantucket church’s youth group, and played some games including “Evolution,” one of our youth group’s favorite games. I said playing “Evolution” was a religious matter, because it proves that we can talk about evolution in our church. (If you want to know how to play the game, instructions are here.) We ate dinner together, we all got along, and found we had plenty to talk about.

Saturday morning was the big day: the trip to Nantucket’s dump. Most of the Nantucket youth had to leave, either to go to work or for other obligations. But Alex, Jessie, and Lynnie joined us in our trek to the dump, while Sally, one of the Nantucket adult advisors, kindly drove us all.

To get to the dump, you head down Madaket Road. You can see the mound of the landfill from a ways down the road; it’s now the highest point on the island, higher even than Altar Rock. You turn in, stopping where the bike path crosses the entry road, and then you can see a number of buildings. The recycling shed is first, with doors where you can throw in every conceivable recyclable item. Trash disposal is a serious problem on the island — it’s too expensive to ship garbage off island, and the landfill is getting bigger every day — so there are strict laws that everything possible must be recycled. A buzz of activity surrounded the recycling shed: cars and light trucks pulling up, people going back and forth with bags and boxes. Sally said she had just been to the dump with a bag of bottles and glass, and the bag had broken, and it had been quite something to clean up.

If you drive past the recycling shed to get to the landfill’s face, but we didn’t go there. Instead, we went to the left of the recycling to our true goal: the “Take It or Leave It” shack. It’s a building about thirty feet square, with some shelves around the edges and a big central table. Two rather disreputable hippy-types sat outside: scruffy facial hair and disreputable clothes that had once been expensive. Sally said, “You’re not supposed to linger but people do.” The two hippy-types waited for people to bring fresh new items into the shack, and pounced upon the good things and put them in a truck with Vermont plates. Sally said, “There’s a couple of good yard sales today. They’ll close at eleven so they can leave off whatever’s left over before the dump closes at noon.” The hippy-types were obviously waiting for something just like that.

We went in the shack. The central table was filled with clothes; true to gender stereotypes, some of the girls went for the table, while Jarrod, Emma, and I explored the shelves. The books were pretty good: along with the usual Reader’s Digest versions of everything, I saw Tolstoy, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air,, and, strangely, Canadian author Thomas Raddall’s Roger Sudden. I grabbed the Raddall book.

The big items were left outside. Sally found a great folding screen, cloth stretched over a wood frame; and a hanging lamp; and one or two other things. She had to take it all home and come back, because we could not have fit all eight of us and her treasures in the minivan.

After a while, we had all picked everything over pretty well. We stood in a circle talking, waiting for Sally to return. Everyone showed what he or she had found. Alyzza had a pretty good sport coat and a shirt. Emma found a Nancy Drew book for Sally (who loves Nancy Drew). Jarrod had half a dozen Steven King books. He sat down in a wicker chair that someone had just dropped off and started to read. The rest of us stood around and watched a pair of Barn Swallows swoop in and out of the “Take It or Leave It” shack. The sun started to come out. You could smell the compost from the big windrows out behind the equipment shed. You could smell the ripe garbage from the open face of the landfill. Gulls circled overhead, content with life, for a gull loves nothing better than a good open dump.

At last Sally came back. The big part of our adventure was over. We spent the rest of the eating lunch (at the resturant where Janine, one of the Nantucket youth, works) and walking out to Brant Point to see the little lighthouse there. Jessie found a wing from a dead bird. “My mother works at the Maria Mitchell Association,” she said, “where she stuffs birds for scientific specimens. She’s going to teach me how this summer.” Which sounded to me like a great way to spend a summer. Jessie and I looked at the bird wing — only bones and skin and feathers were left — and Jessie pointed out the radius and humerus.

The four of them came down to the pier to see us off. We waved to them from high up on the ferry deck. “Come back soon!” they shouted up to us. Then we were out in the harbor, and rounding Brant Point. I threw a penny at the end of the jetty, because our mother said to us that that’s what you’re supposed to do when you leave Nantucket. Jarrod and I stood on the deck, taking turns looking at Common Loons and Harbor Seals through my binoculars. “This was a great trip,” said Jarrod, who is often vaguely cynical. Who would have thought a field trip to a dump could be so much fun?