To the Editor,

There is much of Warwick that comes across like a loud shout from the top of the bleachers. But there is another part of Warwick that lives with a quieter insistence. It’s a Warwick that you might find under tree-cover on a dead-end street that backs up to a small brook that in turn empties into a bigger brook that leads to a cove and a bay and an ocean.

It’s a Warwick where someone might, year-in and year-out, for decades, walk the edges of the road, and dive deeper into the woods, to gather up pound after pound, and then ton after ton, of plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and every other piece of trash that we let accumulate in the small bits of nature left between our houses. It’s a Warwick where someone can love to live because it’s where he always lived and where for over six decades he engaged and explored and improved the place with the dreaminess of a kid and the work ethic of a professional.

Paul Earnshaw died earlier this month. His obituary duly noted the constancy with which he approached his family, his religion, his job, his outdoor pursuits, and his avocation taking care of the Buckeye Brook watershed.

 It didn’t mention that he was the recipient of the Blueways Stewardship Award from the Rhode Island Blueways Alliance and Save The Bay’s Alison J. Walsh Award for Outstanding Environmental Advocacy. It didn’t attempt to number or catalog the thousands of hours he spent not only cleaning up Buckeye Brook, but also clearing the path for the buckeyes to spawn, and also counting the buckeyes as they returned each spring, and also working with the Boy Scouts and other members of the community in organizing the largest-scale environmental clean-ups that the City of Warwick has ever seen.

 Dozens of discarded tires down an embankment? No problem. Disused storm drain pipes clogging the watercourse? On it, he’ll bring his logging tools and come-along. I remember the sheer joy Paul had in discovering some old signs from Greylawn Farms Poultry that we pulled out of the woods where kids had made a fort and, unfortunately, blocked the flow of Buckeye Brook just before the spring spawning season. I remember the caution he took when leading kayak paddles up the brook, and I credit the breadth of spirit he showed by embracing anyone who came along with energy to protect Warwick’s natural resources. Paul’s disciples are many, and with them Paul’s memory will be long.

Paul’s voice wasn’t the crashing waves at Misquamicut, or the hum of a motorboat leaving Warwick Cove. Paul’s voice was the steady murmur of Buckeye Brook, flowing always, in spite of everything around it. It was the voice of someone who was so comfortable in this city that there had ceased to be any separation between Paul and the world around him.

And I think I will continue to hear Paul’s voice when I peer over the guardrail into the brook on Warwick Avenue. And I like to think his spirit will be in those fish that swim from here all the way into the middle of the ocean, so far they might be forgotten, but that keep coming back, challenging all the odds we put up against them, to remind us of the value of the land where we live.

George Shuster Jr.

Warwick