Derrick Z. Jackson

Cleaner Charles

Ducklings summit a rock near the North Beacon Street Bridge. (Derrick Z. Jackson/ Globe Staff)

By Derrick Z. Jackson

Globe Columnist / July 4, 2010

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ON THE Fourth of July, the Charles River retreats to a backdrop for the majestic music of the Pops and the magic of fireworks. On closer look, we have much more to celebrate, as we have granted these once-horribly polluted waters their own independence. Spring mornings bring sights worthy of a national wildlife refuge as the shoreline is lined with herons looking for herring and duck and geese babies bobbing about. On one fall day, there was a loon in the Watertown/Newton section of the river.

“There’s one stretch I call Okeechobee,’’ said Tom McNichol, speaking of a section that meanders between Watertown and Boston. “From one side to the other, all you see is green trees and shrubs, water and birds. You don’t see any roads and you can’t hardly hear the cars. You think you are in Florida in the Everglades.’’

McNichol helps make the river sparkle by picking up trash. For the seventh year, this 72-year-old retired computer salesman and sailing enthusiast runs the Charles River Cleanup Boat, from which he and a team of volunteers patrol the shoreline for floating trash. Normally he picks up a 25-gallon bag or two. But in the week after the Pops and the fireworks, he collects up to 36 bags. This is apart from the 26 tons of trash the Department of Conservation and Recreation says was collected after last year’s celebration.

“It’s like cleaning up your house after a great party,’’ McNichol said. “To a degree, the river is my house. If it’s a great party and everyone had a good time, fine. But I hope people, when they throw their trash, remember how lucky we are to have this house.’’

Let us give McNichol his own Independence Day from our trash, in what has become quite the renovated house.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.