Issues > March/April 2007 (#119) > Earth Day Reading

Earth Day Reading

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From the Bottom Up by Chad Pregracke with Jeff Barrow (National Geographic, 2007, $26). To purchase this book, visit our online book store.

Remember Chad Pregracke the next time you're stuck in traffic or on a packed subway commuting to work—you could be sleeping in a tent on a wet island, eating microwaved burritos and picking up other people's garbage for no pay. But, most likely, he's having more fun than you are anyway. What might sound like work release from prison to others is Pregracke's life's work—cleaning up the Mississippi and other riverways around the country one mile at a time.

In this charming memoir, Pregracke and Barrow detail how this calling rose out of a childhood in East Moline, Illinois with the Mississippi literally in his backyard. Following his brother, Brent, to make money diving for mussels in the murky depths of the river (and nearly asphyxiating Brent the first day he assists in a dive), Chad quickly loses patience with the piled up waste at every spot along the water. Not one for half-measures, he determines to clean up a 435-mile stretch of the river from Guttenberg, Iowa to St. Louis. So, no more than 17 years of age, Pregracke approaches Alcoa and other companies, asking for money to support his project. He is all too aware of the sorry impression his long hair and history as a "clammer" make on those he's asking for sponsorship. To his astonishment, they offer a $10,000 commitment. This is enough to get him started as a one-man operation with a flat-bottom skiff hawling away riverside garbage in his hometown environs.

From this point on, life consists of sleeping outdoors or on an unheated houseboat, dining on convenience store foods (ketchup sandwiches in the case of a vegan friend) and working mile by mile along the river, pulling up bathtubs, bowling balls, porta potties and the occasional message in a bottle. His first such message is the most poignant: Launched by a fourth grade teacher with notes from every student in class, the bottle had floated no more than ten feet before drifting into a logjam. He calls the teacher, but doesn't have the heart to tell her how quickly the bottle's travels ended.

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