By Tabitha Ricketts

If you’ve taken a stroll around Lyon Park on a Sunday evening, you may have crossed paths with the Burns family—on foot and on skates—out and about on a unique family mission: to enjoy the nice weather, and clean up our neighborhood. 

Always an active family, Kelly and Josh Burns have long embraced the tradition of a family walk after dinner. As often as weather and schedules allow, Micah and Levi strap on their helmets and grab their skates, scooters, or bikes to keep pace with their parents for a neighborhood stroll. One evening last spring, then-six-year-old Micah suggested an update to the tradition: picking up trash.

“Team Burns Trash Walks” are now a regular part of the family routine. The whole family sets out together on their usual routes through the neighborhood, sometimes deviating to higher-traffic streets with a higher trash yield. Each member of the family carries a plastic bag and hunts down scraps of litter like a lightly competitive game of “I Spy,” with extra cheers of victory for larger pieces of trash like a water bottle or chunk of styrofoam. The walks aren’t terribly long, but they have no problem filling up their bags, sometimes redistributing the trash if someone runs out of room. 

There are a few rules: they don’t touch cigarette butts, for example. The kids are careful of traffic, even when they spot a choice piece of trash just across the road. Navigating trash pick-up on wheels isn’t the easiest task, either, although the kids bounce up from each collection with limitless energy. And the task isn’t without its frustrations—the Burns were upset to actively witness littering in our neighborhood, and on Earth Day of all days! But the family keeps at it with good cheer and open hearts, folding their care for our community and the environment into their routines and core values. 

Not every family walk is a trash walk, but Team Burns is out cleaning up our streets more weeks than not. Sometimes the trash walk is a given; sometimes it’s specifically requested by one of the kids. After each walk, the Burns hold out their bags and survey their haul—bags full of good deeds and community care. It’s not their trash, but it IS their neighborhood—just like it’s all of ours. Micah recognized that at just six years old, and prompted a new family tradition to give back. Her example is an inspiration for all of us, the community, to take pride in our beautiful Lyon Park. Maybe this summer Team Burns won’t be the only team taking regular trash walks—I know you’ll see me out there!