Silver Lake

Friday, July 29, 2011

So, Silver Lake got trashed during our recent heat wave.

Surprised? We know people are careless or uncaring with their trash. We KNOW that. And if we know that, so do the people responsible for taking care of Silver Lake.

But as our Hattie Bernstein reported: (Hollis Police Chief James) Sartell said park officials described attendance on Sunday as “heavy” and also said they were short-staffed.

Heavy attendance should have been no surprise. It was hot, and we all knew it was going to be hot. That being the case, why was the park short-staffed?

Of course there are reasons. Probably every state park is short-staffed, but that doesn’t help the situation at Silver Lake and that’s what we care about at the moment, and that is certainly what the people in Hollis care about.

Now of course we place the actual blame on people who don’t clean up after themselves. We know, and there are signs to this effect, that Silver Lake is a “carry in, carry out” park. That means you take home the trash you bring in. It’s pretty clear.

But not everyone thinks that way. It’s one thing to say “carry in, carry out” to people who are hiking or camping in the White Mountains. It’s just a different mindset because people hiking the White Mountains are not in the same frame of mind as people spending a day at a local lake. They’re not thinking about their trash. They just want it to disappear; they don’t want to deal with it.

But for hiking in the mountains, dealing with trash is part of the planning process.

But when you go to a state park, you expect to find trash receptacles readily available.

Oh, we know what you’re thinking: When you don’t find enough trash bins, or when the ones you do find are full, well, you should carry out your trash.

Not everyone respects nature and/or our state parks the same way you do. So when there aren’t enough trash bins, they just dump their trash wherever because it’s easier than carrying it home.

What our state must decide is how big a priority our state parks are. We pride ourselves on the beauty of our landscape and certainly Silver Lake is part of that. How important is that beauty? What’s it worth to us to keep it beautiful and clean?

Is it, for instance, worth a little more tax money?

Oh, you say, we could ask that about a lot of things, like drug rehab programs that are getting shut down or state colleges that are raising costs to make up for government cuts. Yes, we could say that about most anything funded by government.

But government is us. We are the ones who determine what something is worth and if we want Silver Lake to be a beauty spot, then we need to properly fund the agencies that take care of our state parks. If they need more people and more trash bins, they need more money.

So? What’s it worth?