I’ve come to realize that many people in Alaska don’t actually care about it.

It’s an over-generalization, but seems like a lot of people just come up here to make a quick buck, or use our state as a playground. While they’re here they try to transform our state into something else, be that Texas, California or whatever.

I feel this way after years of seeing our beaches and trailheads shat upon, our politicians being stacked with out-of-staters, and the little things (like the fact that the Alaska flag has hung upside down on the Seward fire station flag pole for who-knows how long). I see more confederate flags in front of peoples homes than I do Alaska flags, despite Alaska not even being a US territory at the time of the civil war.

Sorry to be negative or a scrooge about this, it just makes me sad to see our state trashed symbolically and literally year after year. Some people don’t understand or appreciate the true worth of this place and think it’s some kind of reality-show-come-true that they can carve their own image into. Alaska already IS something, and it has been way before we planted a foot on it.