(Hunter)

Alaska is the Land of Misdirected Mail. For some reason we seem to be the nation's, if not the world's repository for lost, badly routed, and delayed post. Ask just about any Alaskan, and they'll offer at least one example of mail that arrived under odd circumstances, usually arriving long after the original postmark, with very odd, widely-dispersed additional postmarks added on. Those who don't can tell you of mail they sent that never arrived. Alaskans rarely send postcards, as they lead the list of lost and misdirected mail.

This phenomenon seemed to increase when the Post Office switched the state abbreviations to two letters. Most commonly, Alaska (AK) gets Arkansas's mail (AR) and vice versa. In the modern age of Internet tracking, we use that service for entertainment value. Often times I've watched a tracked package, almost always something badly needed, such as a wind generator part, wander from its midwestern state origin to the east coast, then back across the country, passing its city of origin before eventually making it to my mailbox.

This Christmas we received a piece of mail that had gone particularly astray. Unfortunately, we had the perfect opportunity to do something special with it, but failed.

We had gone to town to take Apprentice to the high school Homecoming Dance on a Saturday night. We had borrowed a neighbor's "town house" for a place to stay overnight, and stopped at the Post Office to check the mail on the way there. Among our cards and letters, we found one sent from Maine to an address in New Jersey.

Allow me to dwell on that a moment: a Christmas card sent from Maine, on the east coast, to New Jersey, a few states down that same coast, had made it to our small town in Southeast Alaska!

Our mail does not come here by accident. Our mail is generally routed through Anchorage, then Juneau, brought to those cities by commercial airline. It is then sent on to our town on our small local carriers, single- and twin-engine aircraft with six seats or less. This system often means days and days without receiving mail that is meant to arrive here. It takes a lot of separate people working very hard to misdirect a piece of mail here by that route.

We had not eaten dinner yet, and were anxious to get to it. Without thinking, I showed the letter to Apprentice for a laugh, then popped the letter into the "out of town" slot. As it left my fingers, inspiration hit.

It was a Saturday evening, after the last mail pick up of the day. The letter would not be handled by anyone, much less sent on, until Monday morning. What we should have done was take the card with us. The next morning, when there was enough light, we could have taken the card to any edge of town, an easy walk from where we stood, found one of the town's welcoming signs, and snapped a photo of the letter next to it. We could then copy down the address and return address, and drop the card back at the Post Office. If we did this, we could print the photo, and send the sender and recipient of the card a copy, with a brief note telling them just how far that particular card had traveled out of its way. Perhaps they would have gotten a kick out of it—at very least they would know why the card was so late! All of this could have been done without further slowing delivery of the card.

Unfortunately, it was too late. Perhaps we'll be ready to act the next time the opportunity arises.