It’s not unusual to spot salamanders in the first few weeks of spring, but on the Towpath Trail in Tremont last weekend, one measuring 16 feet long — and glowing — floated through the air. 

No, it was not a new local cryptid, but a lantern built from reclaimed fabrics, cardboard and salvaged wood by sculpture artist Mark Schaltz. 

The salamander, called “Keeper of the Threshold,” was one of five lanterns commissioned by the local nonprofit Canalway Partners for its 5th annual Towpath Trail Lantern Parade. 

Canalway Partners aims to steward the history and environment around the Ohio and Erie Canal. To that end, the organization hosts events and supports educational projects focused on the canal’s run through Cuyahoga County. 

For the parade, Canalway Partners paid artists to create lanterns from materials that would likely otherwise end up in landfills. Each artist focused on a different element of the canal’s history. Schaltz’ salamander, for example, was an ode to decades of environmental improvement along the canal. 

Connor Riva, another artist, focused on railway transportation along the canal. His lantern was a visual timeline of that history, featuring cardboard train cars meticulously crafted and painted to match cars that once rode the rails in the Cuyahoga Valley. 

“I’m not originally from here, so in terms of history, doing events like this helps me just to learn a little bit more,” Riva said. “The main premise of all these lanterns is to make them out of upcycled or recycled materials. In a lot of my art endeavors, I use recycled materials. I turn, essentially, trash into treasure.”

Rabbit Hole Fanatics art collective, Jim Dotson and Shannon Marie Timura also built lanterns for the parade. 

This year’s lantern parade was the largest yet, said Canalway Partners’ Meghan Paynter. Led by the marching band from John Marshall High School, hundreds of walkers — some carrying homemade upcycled lanterns – followed the Towpath Trail from Sokolowski’s Overlook to the fire station on Collision Bend. 

“Canalway’s mission is to connect people to place,” Paynter said. “One of those important places that we push people to is the towpath trail. It is a historic representation of the Ohio and Erie Canal towpath trail that follows the route of the canal. And one of our main goals is just to make sure that people know that this asset is here.”