A harrowing trek to reach the mailbox
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Let me tell you about my poorly planned and ill-fated jaunt to the mailbox during the winter storm Wednesday night.
All day long, I’d debated on just how badly I needed to retrieve whatever bills and credit card come-ons I would find in there. Around dinnertime, as the snow continued to pile up, I decided to stay inside.
But then I signed onto Facebook and saw all the poetic posts about nature and the lovely snow, how it “covers plants up snug, with a white quilt” and about how the snow “muffles the sound” and “softly kisses the leaves and petals.”
Being outside would be lovely, a peaceful walk through a winter wonderland.
And so I went to find my boots, which turned into a long search for the other boot. Unable to find a matching set, I went with the next best thing, the bargain-store UGG-type things that are more in the slipper family, but enough like boots, I thought, for my quick jaunt.
Should I take the flashlight I use on my evening walks? No, the “moonlight reflecting off the snow” will light my way. Should I go back upstairs for my winter cap?
No, this would be speedy.
I stepped out of the door to find the snow much deeper than it looked from inside, and now my jaunt up the driveway had become a Shackleton trudge.
Because lymphedema has made my left foot larger than my right, I must go up a size in every pair to accommodate the difference. And now that slipper boot is flopping around on my right foot. Twice it gets stuck in the snow and twice I step right out of it. Unable to lift my left leg high enough to step over the snow because, lymphedema, I now am scraping my feet forward, plow-like. The snow pours in, soaking my sockless feet.
Up the driveway I go. Has this driveway always been this long and steep? Also, where is the driveway?
That soft blanket has covered the parts of my property that indicate where the driveway ends and where the drop off into the wooded part of the property begins.
And now I have gone off course. Lost in the woods. In my yard.
Wet and having grown a size or two, that floppy right boot might as well be the box it came in because it won’t stay on the foot. The only way for me to get back on course is to maneuver sideways up the little hill that I hope will lead me back onto the driveway. I must look like I’m wearing snowshoes.
Stuck in a drift, I squint through “sparkly crystal flakes” to spot the mailbox 50 feet away. It is wearing a fluffy white hat. To reach it I would have to carve a path through what may or may not be the driveway. To miss the driveway would take me across ground filled with ruts and roots. Twist an ankle and fall – I could freeze to death.
My mood lifts when I see some deer tracks and decide to follow them to the mailbox. But then I remembered, why would a deer be going to my mailbox?
The snow is still falling and I’m hatless because I had not planned carefully enough. I am cold, and my head and feet are wet. Boy, did I ever misjudge this one. It would take me most of 20 harrowing minutes to reach the mailbox.
It was empty.