Diving for Trash in Cape Cod's Freshwater Ponds Gives These Women Purpose

The Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage are helping wildlife and finding community

Eric Spitznagel,

AARP

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Published November 26, 2024

Video: These Older Women Are Making a Splash Diving for Trash

When Susan Baur, an 84-year-old retired psychologist from North Falmouth, Massachusetts, started swimming in her mid-60s, she was scared of the ocean. “So I went to the ponds,” she says. “Which were filthy, but the garbage made it easier.” She’d use floating trash as markers so she wouldn’t get lost in the murky waters. “I’d think, ‘OK, just 25 more strokes to that beer bottle and I can turn around.’ It was weirdly comforting.”

But then she started to worry about the wildlife. “I wanted the turtles to have a good life,” Baur says. “And the more popular the ponds got with visitors, the more trash would end up in there. It went from a few strategically placed beer cans to dozens. It was just too much!”

So in 2018, she and a few female swimming friends started casually making plans to pick up trash. “We’d call each other up and say, ‘Oh, you’re going swimming today, too? Let’s bring a float so we can pick up garbage along the way.’ Gradually it started growing and more people showed up, and it blossomed into something.”

Some of the garbage removed from Jenkins Pond in East Falmouth in July 2022.

Courtesy OLAUG

That “something” became the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage (or OLAUG for short), a group of about 15 swimmers and five kayakers devoted to cleaning the freshwater ponds around Cape Cod. Last summer, they cleaned 17 of the cape’s 996 freshwater ponds. (Next year, Baur adds, they hope to up that number to 20.) They’ve pulled a remarkable amount of junk from the water, including car batteries, old shoes, cellphones, dog toys, a garden gnome, and even a toilet bowl. Most of it goes to the dump or recycling, but sometimes they find treasure they keep. “I’ve got a squirt gun collection at home, so nobody throws away a squirt gun. We’ve found a few, and they’ve all come home with me,” Baur says.

There are tryouts to join the OLAUG periodically, and there’s already a waiting list of 40 women hoping to join the ranks. To be a swimmer, you need to be comfortable in the water for 90-plus minutes and proficient in using a mask and snorkel. The group freestyle swims with no fins, and women must be able to swim a half mile in under 30 minutes and free-dive to 8 to 10 feet. And then there’s the age restriction. “You have to be between 64 and 84,” Baur says. “But that’ll change to 65 and 85 soon, because I’m almost 85 and I don't want to be more than 20 years older than anybody else in the group.”

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Though she cracks plenty of jokes about it, Baur actually doesn’t mind being the oldest. “The other women tell me all the time, ‘You give us inspiration. You’re going this strong at 84, that means I have at least another 15 years of active, interested, intense engagement.”

Though Baur mostly swam alone for at least a decade before founding OLAUG — she’s currently working on a memoir, tentatively titled “Swimming Alone at Eighty: Rejoining the Great Conversation” — she says it’s the other women who make the group feel so meaningful. “I’ve never had a community of friends like this before,” she says. “And I know it’s not just me. I can’t tell you how many times new members have told me, ‘I’ve found my tribe.’”

Daphne Burt, 68, a recently retired pastor who joined OLAUG last year, echoes that sentiment, adding that it “feels so much more empowering to do something just with women. I don’t have to prove to anyone that I can ‘keep up’ or compete with men. I feel very protective of these women. We are a fabulous family.”

OLAUG members at Snake Pond. Left to right: Karen Lambert, Maggie Megaw, Carol Bowers, Marci Johnson, Paule Craton, Michelle Milligan, Poppy Kennedy, Jane Driscoll, Terri Gerber, Anne Donohue, Susan Baur, Sue Dropo, Trish Corey, Janet Lefko, Robin Melavalin, Mary Grauerholz and Diane Hammer.

Courtesy OLAUG

Trish Corey, 65, who works as a senior executive for a software company, joined last June primarily for environmental reasons, but it’s evolved into something more personal. “As we get older, women can start to feel like we’re losing our value,” she says. “Especially if we’re not working or raising kids anymore. You start to feel invisible.” But in OLAUG, she’s not just doing something that gives her purpose, she’s also surrounded by accomplished women. “We’ve got a doctor and an engineer and two scientists,” she says. “These aren’t women who were just sitting around going, ‘What should I do with my life now?’"

Baur isn’t trying to be ageist by keeping out younger people — both men of any age and women under 64 can join, but only for riding kayaks that bring back the garbage. As Baur sees it, swimmers need to be at least 64 because “that’s the age of gratitude.”

Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage members, left to right: Robin Melavalin, Anne Donohue, Jane Driscoll, Mary Grauerholz, Julia Benz, Susan Baur and Poppy Kennedy after a clean-up at Jenkins Pond in East Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Courtesy OLAUG

“Just looking at the group now, they’ve lost husbands, they’ve lost careers, they’ve lost homes. They’ve moved when they didn't want to move. Five or six of us have lost body parts,” she says. “When you’ve lost what we’ve lost, and seen how arbitrary life can be, you’re grateful for every pond, for every beautiful day, for every chance to swim with each other. So, yeah, I think you have to reach the age of gratitude before you can do this.”

Baur has no intention of retiring from OLAUG anytime soon. In fact, she wants to grow old like the turtles she swims with every day. “Turtles basically don’t age,” she says. “They just thrive as they get older. They go to the end of the day, the end of the season, the end of their life at full intensity. That's what we want to do, too. Everybody wants to tighten their grip on life. You see it in the ponds every day. And it changes you. It emboldens you. It puts a fire in your belly.”

“The turtles have it figured out,” she says. “We’re just following their lead.”