How will I bear it, when 200,000 more people live in this valley?

Recent news reports advance the claim that by the year 2030, the population of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley will rise to 300,000. The thought, to me, is unbearable. When we first moved into the Mat-Su 27 years ago, the population of the entire valley was about 30,000, but exploding fast due to the influx of money and jobs that poured across Alaska as a result of the oil boom that followed the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. 

At that time, the same sorts of folks who put together this latest prediction were forecasting a population increase to 90,000, right about now. From what I gathered from listening to and reading the recent stories, about 100,000 people now live in this valley.

Way too many for me.

Naturally, there are many who get excited when they hear of such potential growth, as they see new opportunities to make money. Above all else, above open, wild, free country, the right to bear arms and freedom itself, money has been the force that has driven and ruled Alaska during the time that we have lived here. I am certain that it will continue to be.

Were it not for the much-loathed restraining hand of the federal government with its national parks and wildlife refuges, this place would have been ripped apart. Nothing that bore the potential of yielding a dollar would have been left unscratched.

To many, money equals quality of life, but to me, each time a new family moves into the valley to the increase of the population, the quality of life diminishes - perhaps imperceptibly with just that family, but devastatingly upon accumulation.

Please do not misunderinterpret me - I need money too and I do not begrudge any of these families who move here, hoping to improve their circumstance. I welcome each one. We did the same 27 years ago and yes, we diminished the quality for those of like-mind who preceded us.

For example, there was an old trapper's trail that cut right through our back yard. The trapper who had made it had long since disappeared from the country, but many recreational snowmachiners used to buzz up and down that trail and it was a real battle to convince the most bull-headed among them that, now that the trail not only went through a subdivision but directly through yards where children played, they could no longer use that trail.

When the population here hits 300,000, where will the recreational snowmachiners go? Their prospects will be greatly limited. Look at Anchorage right now. How much recreational snowmachining do you see going on in that town? Anchorage is about 300,000. Smaller area than the Mat-Su, true, but the reality will be largely the same.

Perhaps our arrival did increase the quality of life for the developer of our subdivision, who was a bright, energetic, ambitious, enthusiastic man in his forties - a jogger and a musician. We put more money into his pocket.

"I'm really not interested in the money," he told me one day as we drove through the newly burgeoning neighborhood, "what I want is just to be able to drive through here one day with my daughter and be able to tell her, 'when I first came here, there was nothing but trees, but your dad built this - and look at all these families who now make their lives here!'"

His heart killed him, not long afterward. They named a ball park after him and my boys all played American Legion baseball there.

As for the above series of pictures, I took them after I dragged Margie up from her position of convalescence upon the couch and drove her to Taco Bell, where we could eat in the car, just to get her out of the house.

There was no Taco Bell back then, no McDonald's, no Arby's, No Carl's Jr., no KFC-A&W, no fast food of any kind.

As ought to be apparent to anyone who has read much of this blog, and to the chagrin of my oldest daughter, I enjoy my fast food. 

After we ate, I stopped at the Tesoro Station on Seward Meridian and Palmer-Wasilla Highway to gas up the Escape. I damn near froze - not because it was that cold, it wasn't. It was about 18 degrees F., having warmed up from the -5 (-21 C) of the morning. But the wind was brisk and I was protected only by a light jacket.

I then climbed back into the car and took Margie on a good, long, drive. I thought about the cost of the gas and the added pollution and greenhouse gas that I was throwing into the air, but I drove anyway, because I really wanted to.

I need money, too, I really do. Maybe when they start the gas line up, some of the new dollars will land in my bank account. If I can get enough to buy, maintain, and gas-up another airplane, I can still escape the maddening crowd.

Even if by chance these two break all records for feline longevity and are still around in 2030, they will not be bothered by the population increase.

If the economy stays bad in the Lower 48 but the gas line becomes real here - wow! It will get completely crazy! People from all over will pour in up here looking for jobs, just like they did during TAPS construction and the oil boom. Most of them, probably 70 or 80 percent, will not find jobs, but they will still need to eat, they will still need a warm, dry, place to lay their heads and country to play in. The influx will be disproportionately male; they will need females, however they can obtain access to them.

Everyone here seems to be excited about the prospect of a gas line; it just can't happen soon enough.

This picture of Royce and Chicago is one of a series of pictures from yesterday that appeared on Grahamn Kracker's No Cat's Allowed Kracker Cat blog.

Comments

[Kelly Mitchell]

It's the dichotomy of Alaska...boom and bust and save the nature part so it's still beautiful. The developers hate that so much is locked up by the feds, but that's what keeps us from totally destroying the state in search of the almighty dollar. It's so weird for me (raised in southeast AK) to try to balance the part of me that wants to conserve and save the natural beauty with the part that knows full well that people have to make a living and that involves destroying what is beautiful by logging or building another pipeline or expanding Anchorage into Palmer/Wasilla. It's why I live in Southeast: Anchorage doesn't believe in S.E.

[Sean Holland]

I am from Palmer, now living in Palmer's sister city, Saroma, Japan. I coincidentally found your blog through a comment you made on a NYT op-ed piece "In Your Dreams" by Jeff Scher.

Saroma Town is located on the northern island of Hokkaido, which has a population of about 5 million people. The population density is 66 times that of the Mat-Su Borough, yet it's considered the "frontier" of Japan. As much as the culture here sometimes grates on my American sensibilities, I think Alaskans could stand to learn something from Japanese-style land management. People here still snowmachine, fish, and enjoy nature. The idea of a subdivision trapline trail being used by snowmachiners is really unheard of. As much as I sometimes yearn for Alaska - the unbounded freedom of the Talkeetnas, the clear expanse of the Copper River Basin, the manic-depressive seasonal cycle of Fairbanks and the far north - I sometimes have nightmares of driving on the Parks from Willow to Wasilla. That entire stretch of road is so poorly planned, overdeveloped, over-trafficked, and ugly that it makes me want to flee to Japan, of all places, with an overall population density 900 times that of Alaska, because here they understand how to use land in a tidy, responsible way. Nonetheless, I still agree with you that the idea of 300,000 people in that valley sends chills down my spine. And although a good economy is good for the people there, as long as I am making my living abroad I will quietly pray for the national recession to help lessen the estimated population increase.