The Advantages Of Life In The Middle Of Nowhere

Anyone who has actually talked to me about life in Cima knows the downfalls: no stores, no services, no kids for Darcy to play with, and the recurring issues with our water supply. And, of course, we're currently in the midst of a water supply issue which has us living in Baker again temporarily (with any luck, very temporarily).

But every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and here is ours: people living "near" each other in the middle of nowhere help each other out. Here's today's lesson.

While we are having a water crisis, our post office is having multiple crises of its own. Following the crazy snow, our M-T-W relief postmistress quit. Can't blame her. She's 83 and was snowed in for three days, not even in her own house. Last Wednesday was her last day and so our Th-F-S relief postmistress is doing the whole week for the time being.

Except that she isn't.

Her boss (not exactly sure what position she holds or where she's located) came to inspect the building and (not surprisingly, given that the toilet isn't working, among other deficiencies) told our postmistress not to come to work until further notice. As in, until the owner has brought the building up to snuff.

Today is bookmobile day. It comes every two weeks for about a half hour. Darcy loves it. I had thought about driving down to Cima and meeting it there, picking up some stuff from the house, etc., but then decided that was silly because the bookmobile comes to Baker right after Cima. But I had told our postmistress I'd be there, so I kept trying the post office number to see if I could catch her while she was there for the bookmobile. I did and she told me that I had packages she wanted me to get today given that she doesn't know the next time the post office would be open.

And here comes the advantage: my postmistress lives far from me, but we've gotten to be friends because I take Darcy down there most days to visit. It's not a busy post office. My bookmobile librarian lives very, very far from me, but we're friendly because Darcy and I rarely miss a bookmobile visit and she only gets three or four people per stop.

So my postmistress gave my packages to my librarian and they were delivered to me when we met the bookmobile in Baker. Heartwarming, isn't it?

Of course, there's still the not-so-small issue of how we're going to get our mail until the post office status is resolved. I'm hoping I can walk over to the Baker PO this afternoon and ask if they'll deliver our mail to Kelso Depot, the visitor center where Michael works. They offered and followed through on that when our post office was closed for the snow before Christmas, so I'll just hope they can do it again.