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Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

As the snow melts, you'd expect to find some grass blades underneath, ready to green up as summer approaches. But not here. No, in the Last Frontier, a place known for its beauty, you find nothing but trash, and lots of it. You'd think we live in the Matanuska-Susitna Landfill, not the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, by the eyesore that we've perpetuated.

Take a drive down the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, and you'll see a rainbow of colors -- not in the scenery, but in the garbage lining the ditch between the towns. There's the usual assortment of fast-food wrappers, as well as building materials scattered about.

How, and perhaps more importantly why, does that garbage appear every single winter? It's simple -- irresponsibility. How many times have you driven down the road and seen garbage fly out of the back of the truck in front of you? Or driven past a home construction site to see half of the building supplies in the lot adjacent to the actual site? In either case, irresponsibility is the culprit.

I know, I know -- the wind blows unexpectedly blah, blah, blah. Whatever. You know the wind is going to blow -- this is the Valley, right? -- so do something about it. I spent two weeks in Hawaii this winter, where the wind blows every single day, most of the time much harder than it blows here. And you know what? There wasn't garbage everywhere. Actually, it was quite the opposite, as the lush scenery wasn't marred by fast-food wrappers tossed around by idiots. Seems like the people there have a little something called pride which us Alaskans seem to be missing.

Last summer, my family enjoyed a week with good friends who made the trip from Minnesota. On the way home from the airport, one of the first things they noticed and commented on was how much garbage lines our highways. Great. There's Pioneer Peak to their right, entire mountain ranges in front of them and Cook Inlet to their left, and the first impression that Alaska leaves is that of a free-for-all garbage dump gone bad.

That's exactly the impression we're leaving in the minds of visitors, and residents, which is sad, considering there are so many other things for which Alaskans can be proud.

During that same week my friends and I floated Willow Creek, trying to get them hooked into some silver salmon.

When we got to the mouth of the creek and pulled our rafts out, I was a bit confused -- it seemed more like a refuse site than an Alaska fishery. If there was one piece of garbage there were 10,000 pieces of garbage around the camp areas.

Alaska is a great place, but we're quickly doing our best to destroy it.

If you don't think it's bad, you're driving around with your eyes closed.

I say, let's keep it up. Let's toss garbage out of our windows on every trip, and totally ruin one of the last great places on the globe. That way, when it is totally gone, when the tourists quit coming, the fishing is terrible due to pollution and trash is spread from Trapper Creek to the Butte, we'll finally realize what we had in the first place.

Won't that be great?

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor.