Living in a rural area, things are done a little bit differently. Picking up the daily mail delivery is one of them. Growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, like our neighbors we had a mailbox right off our driveway in front of our house. Here on the outskirts of Nederland, mailboxes are clumped together in little pods on the main road instead of near our house. So, usually I make a pit stop by the mailboxes to pick up mail on my way home.
Driving the dirt roads in our neighborhood spurs its own set of driving rules. Coming in the pick up of the mail, means crossing over to the opposite side of road, the side of the road with oncoming traffic. No one thinks much of this as not only do you need to watch for cars driving the opposite direction, but horses walking down the road, and the occasional dog camped out in the middle of the road.
But as I came in for my landing at the mailboxes the other day, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the state of the bank of mailboxes. Looking at those mailboxes reminded me that though the calendar says it’s April, and thereby officially spring, winter is still alive and well in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
The mailboxes were all askew, hither and yon. One mailbox had its end poking out of a snowbank, much like the tip of the Titanic’s nose poking out of the sea as it made its final descent. Just the box mind you, with no post. Other mailboxes clung tenuously to their wooden posts, some careening backward as if they were a tree about to fall in the forest. Others were askew sideways, creating the most haphazard scene.
What could have caused all this disarray? Well, as the snow continues to fall and pile up, and the county snowplows clear the road, it’s not always easy to tell where mailboxes are and aren’t. Especially, given our most recent snow fall had two feet of snow falling within 12 hours. All that plowing and clearing of snow left the mailboxes as collateral damage, a blatant reminder that winter is not over yet.
