Teenager and her burro fill up two trash bags in one hour along Buttercup Road
By Hayden Seder
Skylar Runswick, 13, and her mother Deida are raising awareness about trash in the Wood River Valley with the help of an unlikely friend—their 1-year-old burro named Smokey.
As Earth Day this year was on Monday, April 22, the duo decided to work on training their donkey for backpacking by walking him down Buttercup Road and packing his saddle bags with the litter mom and daughter collected.
“I was on a run the other day near where we live on Buttercup Road and noticed all the trash,” Deida said. “My daughter Skylar has always been my little environmentalist—she’s been picking up trash ever since she was little.”
Deida and her husband Duane are homeschooling Skylar this year and are always looking for exciting projects. The family keeps a menagerie of animals—25 in total—including a miniature horse, two donkeys, chickens, ducks, lizards, cats, and Smokey. Building up trust in a backpacking burro is a process and the Runswicks felt Smokey was ready to wear some pack gear.
“We put the trash bags on either side of the sawbuck, which holds all the packs, and led him up and down Buttercup and started picking up trash,” Deida said. “We want to make it a weekly thing and maybe take him near the bike path.”
The response has been great, with people stopping to thank the trio and wanting to know the next time they bring Smokey out so they can come with their kids and get involved.
Tale of the Trash
The amount and type of trash that Deida and Skylar found in the hour or so they spent picking it up astounded them. Roughly two bags full of alcohol bottles, pipes, metal, cigar wrappers, barbed wire, and even rupees—money from India.
“We want to attack the other half of Buttercup this week,” Deida said. “And maybe other areas that aren’t on the Adopt-A-Highway program or in Indian Creek.”
The instigator of projects like this, according to Deida, has always been Skylar, both an animal lover and a budding environmentalist. The family visits Santa Barbara often and Skylar has been volunteering for a bird sanctuary there since she was 3. A few weeks ago, she raised $300 through a cookie drive that she donated to that same sanctuary.
“Even when she was just 5, she had her first hot-cocoa stand that she used to raise money for the local animal shelter or bird sanctuary,” Deida said.
The family is an inspiration for how taking a small step can make a big impact in this town and for the planet as a whole. Check out the box on this page for small things you can do to make an impact for Earth Day, and for every day throughout the year.