Recently I was visiting family in Taos, NM. Flew into Albuquerque and drove up to Taos. It's lovely country, and so different from the Midwest. I stopped often at 'pull-offs' to take pictures of the scenery, and my son took me on a number to 'jaunts' to scope out other beautiful views.
Sadly, I couldn't help but notice how much trash was strewn along the roadsides in that state. It's a truly distracting amount of refuse just discarded wherever people felt like, as if they couldn't take it home in their cars and dispose of it properly. (Food containers and wrappers, glass bottles both intact and broken to bits, soft drink and beer cans, plastic bottles of all varieties, plastic 'grocery' bags of multitudinous pedigree)
Don't know if the state of New Mexico can't afford to clean up their roadsides and public spaces, or if the citizens of New Mexico are just such uncaring slobs that it's impossible to keep up with the mess they make of their own 'back yard'. I do know that it does put the lie to their slogan-- "Land of Enchantment". Maybe they should add an amendment to it, such as, "But Watch Where You Put Your Feet".
As I commented to my son at one of our stops, "There's enough work here to keep a bodhisattva busy for the rest of their existence". Not that Indiana is exactly a shining example of caring for the environment either.....
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