Ichetucknee Yoga Club launches two-year highway cleanup commitment

The Ichetucknee Yoga Club and Nature Retreat turned a Saturday cleanup into a two-year public commitment, fanning out along U.S. Highway 27 and Southwest Junction Road in Columbia County to collect bottles, food packaging, and other roadside debris.

The group’s first highway cleanup on April 18 marked the start of a formal Adopt-A-Highway arrangement covering a two-mile stretch. Club leader Michael Delaney said the club recently secured a contract that will keep the work going through quarterly cleanups, turning a one-time volunteer effort into an ongoing responsibility.

That schedule matters because Florida’s Adopt-A-Highway program is built around measurable expectations. Volunteers adopt a two-mile section, remove litter at least four times a year, and commit for two years. The Florida Department of Transportation supplies safety vests, litter bags, and safety meetings, and posts recognition signs at the beginning and end of the adopted section. In practice, the club’s success will be visible on the road itself: whether it keeps up the cleanup cadence and maintains the stretch over the full two-year term.

Delaney framed the effort as more than civic housekeeping. He tied it to karma yoga, the yogic tradition of selfless action, and pointed to the club’s identity as a fourth-generation family-owned property as part of why the cleanup fits its long-term relationship with the land. Public club material identifies Michael “Noah” DeLaney as a PhD student in Research Psychology at Keiser University, with interests in clinical psychology, evolutionary psychology, ecotherapy and forest therapy, mindfulness, and nervous-system regulation, a combination that helps explain why this yoga community is linking practice, nature, and stewardship so directly.

The location gives the project added weight. Florida State Parks lists the South Entrance to Ichetucknee Springs State Park at 12087 SW US Highway 27 in Fort White, where all tubing operations take place. The park spans 2,669 acres, holds eight major springs, and feeds the 6-mile Ichetucknee River, whose upper portion is a National Natural Landmark. Keeping the surrounding roadway clean protects the gateway to one of North Florida’s best-known recreation areas.

FDOT says Adopt-A-Highway has been part of the agency since 1990, and the Ichetucknee Yoga Club’s move shows how a wellness group can make that structure work. The model is simple enough for other local yoga communities to copy, but only if they can sustain the two-year pledge and the quarterly labor that turns philosophy into maintenance.