Seedlings of the very first Earth Day

Image via Wikipedia

Thirty-nine years ago, I was 12, and Albion, Mich., was abuzz about the first Earth Day. The students of Albion College were particularly active [Word document] in things environmental. (Walter Pomeroy, the most prominent among them, was a geology student of my father.) Hughes Rudd of CBS News was in town to chronicle the students' activities for a special that night hosted by Walter Cronkite. CBS aired a roundup of reports from around the nation — and little ol' Albion was among them.

One of the activities surrounding that first Earth Day, and the one I remember best, was the planting of tree seedlings in a pasture that is now part of Albion College's Whitehouse Nature Center. That small conifer forest today is tens of feet tall and stands out in the above image from Microsoft Virtual Earth.