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| Volunteers pick up trash during Anchorage's annual spring cleanup. |
| Photo courtesy of Anchorage Chamber of Commerce |
Several years ago, a freelance writer from New York sat in my office only a few hours after arriving in Anchorage for the first time, and told me that she would be moving here the following April so she could marry the man with whom she had fallen in love.
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“Just be prepared,” I warned her. “When you step off that plane, Anchorage will look its absolute worst.”
There was a tone of alarm in her voice as she replied, “Worse than this?”
Outside my office window was six inches of fresh, perfect snow, and a beautiful November day. “Let me explain something …” I began.
The six-week period that begins about April 1 is the only time of year when I could possibly travel Outside for up to a month without getting homesick for Alaska. Snow and ice are either melting or gone, vegetation is mostly dead, Anchorage streets are full of potholes and gravel, and a winter’s worth of litter is exposed after melting out of the snowpack.
It’s ugly. Snow sports are finished, and summer sports haven’t begun. To those of us who live to play outside , it’s a frustrating time of year. The end of a long winter is the only thing that staves off depression as we wait for green leaves, dry trails and the arrival of salmon.
But amid the bleak brown of spring, something amazing happens. Every year in early May, thousands of community volunteers strike out with heavy-duty trash bags, and they clean Anchorage by hand. If you’ve never lived here, imagine that. A sprawling city cleaned manually, piece by piece, from empty beer cans to refrigerator-size debris. (Sometimes, it’s actually refrigerators.)
The volunteers don waders and walk into creeks. They put on blaze-orange safety vests and walk up and down the shoulders and medians of busy roads to round up every manner of garbage deposited there by winter winds or the irresponsible fools who find it easier to throw trash out a car window than to dispose of it properly.
With thick work gloves, and a lot of lower backs that will ache for days afterward, Anchorage residents cheerfully clean up after their careless neighbors. Some groups make it a competition to collect the biggest pile of trash. Some volunteers will man barbecue grills and ice chests to make sure there’s a good meal waiting for everyone at the end of the day.
It is a stunning thing to observe. Inspirational, even.
It speaks volumes about the kind of people who live here, and provides a little beauty at just the time we’re looking for some.
—Tim Woody is editor of Alaska magazine