From the shore, you wouldn’t know that the Connecticut River is one of the most polluted in the region. If you stand north of the Wesleyan boathouse, you might not even smell the stench emanating from the sewage plant half a mile away. And if you watch your step, you won’t touch anything out of the ordinary, like, say, human teeth.

The women’s crew team took to the shores of the Connecticut River on Sept. 30 as part of a region-wide effort to improve the quality of the river, the largest in New England. The event, which also included rowers from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was organized by the Connecticut Watershed Council, in an initiative called “Source-to-Sea Cleanup.”

When the women arrived at the Wesleyan boathouse that afternoon, they were greeted by a collection of garbage bags, plastic gloves and tally sheets to record the type and amount of garbage collected. Traipsing through the brush and forest along the Middletown riverbanks, the women managed to pick up enough trash to fill over thirty large bags.

According to Daphne Schmon ’09, who helped tally all the garbage collected, the most common items were plastic and glass bottles, cans, plastic wrappers and Styrofoam, and enough Dunkin’ Donuts bags to plaster a billboard.

More surprising were the items suggesting personal stories: A faded glamour shot, a rolling pin, a twisted bicycle wheel, a motley collection of shoes, a leather bag with leopard-print details, and a bag of yarmulkes. To collect these items for three hours was to create stories about strangers, the punchline of which was always “And then they ended up in some bushes next to the sewage plant.”

“It looked like someone’s life was thrown on the side of the road,” said Julia Penn ’09. “It was like the scene of a crime, out of ‘CSI.”

Speculation mounted as the collected items grew weirder, and the hours spent on the riverfront grew longer.

“I heard they found human teeth,” said Emily Reisner ’09. “And there was a bag of bones. Julia [Penn] said she saw it.”

To this list, Tressa Eaton, ’09, would add a “Cabbage Patch doll and the complete, dried skeleton of a catfish.” The former, completely clad in its original outfit, struck many rowers as the creepiest, if not the most surprising, find of the day.

“It’s like a child’s thing,” said Kara Rutledge ’09. “All of these things together in one spot and we had to think ‘What happened here?”

One area of the river was so inundated with trash that Emery reported the area to the local authorities. The bank, too steep for the rowers to traverse, was littered with items big and small, ranging from fast food wrappers to a large couch, complete with a condom peeking out between the cushions.

The real dirty work required rowers to get in the water. Amy Louie ’09 was among the few students who rode in Coach Beth Emery’s boat.

“At first we were really afraid to get muddy,” Louie said. “But Mara [Baldwin ’06] and I were like ‘Oh, let’s do it’ so we jumped in the mud.”

Reisner, who loaded bags into the boat, said it was so full that there was barely any room left for the rowers to sit down.

That so many rowers preferred to walk along River Road suggests how unappealing a roll in the mud is. Louie managed to enjoy herself.

“I had fun jumping in the mud, getting dirty,” Louie said. “Tires were just sitting there and no one was gonna take them out.”

At the end of the day, the team carried away a dozen rubber tires for proper disposal.

Despite the crew team’s hard work, it was obvious that cleaning up the Connecticut River required a much larger, concerted effort on the part of the entire Valley community. Thirty tons of trash were removed from the Connecticut during Source-to-Sea in 2004, but much more remains to be done.

“I am pleased with the work we put in and hope to participate in river clean-ups every year,” Emery said.