When the Smoke Clears

Mail showed up. It’s been sorted, brought out to us, etc.

It makes a big difference here. We don’t just get to go shopping.

Mail is sporadic at best. Often the powers that be don’t like sending airplanes out to us. There aren’t enough of us to warrant it. Ticks me off to no end. We are the ones most dependent on basic post to stay attached to home, have the fewest resources, and yet our mail can sit for a month or more on an air strip. When we do get mail as much as 2/3rds of it is misdirected mail that should go elsewhere, which leads us to wonder what happens to ours.

To get here it has to take several hops… when people feel like tossing it on a plane to the next hop.

With the winter setting in, fewer and fewer planes are willing to land for us. They will circle and go home. Passengers trying to get here have been thoroughly frustrated.

Don’t get me started on getting mail OUT. We get a mail clerk once every 6-8 weeks or so to inspect packages and meter the mail. It’s been a while since he was here last. We’re not a priority. So much so when he left last time, we found out he just left the mail just off the runway where it sat in the rain and snow until we could get a tarp to cover. Now when we can get people out here we have someone take one or two packages to drop in the mail once they get to the supported areas.

So like I say, mail is a big deal.

Well, I have received care packages from some of the finest of my friends whom I’ve known and shared a meal with. I get artwork from children, which then adorns my walls in my tin-can/room. And I have received care packages recently from folks who don’t even know me but know about me through here or through other friends.

I have school supplies to give to these children here, and I will be next time I am in an area safe for children. And another fine bastard won some sort of poetry contest and I was the humble person he chose to have his prize sent to. You know… food snob that I am… it is something when a cold can of beef ravioli is something to savor and delight with its variety of flavors and textures, the sweet initial blush, the tang of the tomatoes as the pasta gives way to the beefy center, hints of basil and oregano finishing the feast. Nothing to wash it down with, water would only dilute the flavors, anything else overpower the sensation.

Thank you. All of you. This old/young man is humbled.

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