June 9, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: It was a beautiful day on Jacktown Road ‒ cool breezes, sunlit new foliage, wildflowers, fat cattle in green fields, Sugar Creek galloping along, House Mountain in full plumage — when I came across my elderly neighbors, both close to 80, one with chronic fibromyalgia, the other currently undergoing cancer treatment, lugging a full bag of trash they’d picked up along the road, already well over a mile from their home. The same part of Jacktown Road I’d gleaned just two months before of beer cans, old diapers, bottles filled with tobacco spit, fast food wrappers and containers still oozing ketchup, etc. etc. ad nauseam.
As I pick this mess up, I try to imagine someone rolling down a vehicle window, and tossing all this rotting rubbish into the face of this beautiful place we all call home.
It only takes one reading, or watching, of the news to realize the hell that has enveloped the world — Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, to name a few — the cruelty and selfishness that has become commonplace, and not thank any god we’re in touch with that we here in Rockbridge County lead a privileged life of beauty, relative safety, and above average sanity. Why dishonor it so? This is our home!
We might not be able to change the world significantly — a shocking reality that hit me when I was about 25 ‒ but we CAN, and should, make a big difference right here in Rockbridge County. It’s our duty. It’s our home. It needs us to love and protect it.
Please, folks, think twice before tossing trash into our Paradise. We owe it that much for all it gives back to us. SARAH CLAYTON Rockbridge County
