It was billed as "Breakfast at the Dump" by those who got their hands on the news release from Waste Management Inc., announcing an open house on Tuesday.

"Tours of the Rio Rancho landfill will start promptly at 8:30 a.m., and a free breakfast will be served," the release read.

The cause for celebration was the opening of a landfill cell, more than 100 feet deep and 7 acres wide. New cells come online only so often, and Waste Management wanted to use the opportunity to demonstrate to the public the level of environmental protection that goes into the development of a landfill prior to trash being placed inside of it.

In the old days of trash disposal, you found an arroyo, filled it up, covered it and then waited for the groundwater to become contaminated. The federal government now requires strict lining protocols be followed to protect the water below the surface, which in Rio Rancho, lies about 500 feet below.

People generally don't like landfills. They emit sharp smells, and the wind rearranges the trash. Waste Management spends $7,000 to $8,000 per month hiring temporary labor to pick up loose paper on its premises. Wal-Mart changed the color of its bags from blue to white recently in order to blend in better with the other trash flying about. Wal-Mart probably figured it receives enough criticism for a lot of other reasons and doesn't need to be singled out when the spring winds kick up and blow their bags around.

Some houses are just outside the perimeter of the Rio Rancho landfill. I could never have a kitchen window that overlooks a dump or own a home that gets bombed with seagull splat and pasted with paper and plastic in Picasso form.

Everything we throw away winds up in the dump. I saw an animal control truck waiting in line as I left the tour.

You can size up the level of human activity in your community when you stare into a hole this big and realize that at a delivery rate of 1,500 tons per day, it won't be long before it's completely filled with the trash and unwanted junk from you and your neighbors. You don't get that same sense of community when you open the lid of a Glad-bag-lined kitchen waste basket, and toss a soggy paper towel.

The things that we have no use for always wind up at the bottom of a pile somewhere. I've been nibbling on a big bag of pistachios for a couple of weeks now, and I'm ready to throw it away even though there are still several pistachios in the bottom of the bag. That's because all the nuts on the bottom are ones I can't crack open with my hands. Underachieving popcorn kernels self-relegate themselves to the bottom of the bowl, too.

I took a worn-out baby grand piano to the dump last year. Of all the chords and harmonies I laboriously pulled from that instrument, I'll most remember the haunting sound of the harp's last abstract moan as it thudded on the sandy loam. There were a lot of memories associated with that piano which changed over time; some good, some not so good.

That anthropomorphic instrument of my past didn't change. I did. And in a moment of realization, the polished stone to which I attributed such life, such complete, artificial, narcissistic meaning, faded. And I was ready for the important, healing trip to its burial ground.

Burying your past at the dump costs $7.71 per load. There is no better bargain or resulting exhilaration for the price.