A special thank you to our Chelan County Commissioners

I love living in snow country. It is sometimes an exceedingly beautiful time of year. Especially when the snow is fresh, white and clean. Last Friday night in Leavenworth was picture postcard perfect. We all woke up Saturday morning to a beautiful fresh new coat of snow.
I especially want to thank our Chelan County Commissioners on how well they handled the snow removal. Like most of our locally elected politicians they all subscribe to the belief that it is fine to simply push the stuff off the road and onto citizens private property.
It makes for such great fun watching neighbors try to drive through a 3-foot high berm of compacted snow trying to get out of their driveway.
And it seems like the snowplow drivers look for every opportunity to collect more snow just before they push it onto the end of your driveway. I am sure they must enjoy the sport of building a high wall along the roadside. And it provides added safety by preventing cars from sliding off of the road and into a tree. How thoughtful.
Fortunately, for most of us last Saturday wasn’t a normal workday so we had plenty of time to wait for the neighborhood tractor to pull the high centered Mini-Coopers and Subarus out of the man made snow banks at the end of their driveway. They should have known that that deep pile wasn’t like that soft fluffy stuff lying 5 inches deep in their driveway. After all, how long have they lived here?
Those of us who had your standard snow blower were busy trying to cut a path through the wall of white so even the biggest 4-wheel drive Monster Truck didn’t look silly with its front wheels spinning in the air while the frame is lodged on the top of the mountain of white. It was a daunting challenge but it was a good cardio-vascular workout. And I didn’t have to pay a gym fee – thanks commissioners!
Use a shovel you say? I hope you’re young and healthy. One neighbor spent three hours clearing a 15-foot wide path through his man made mountain of white.
It’s also nice that you can forget about local mail delivery. The Post Office no longer believes in their old motto. If they have to get out of the truck to put it in the box – they won’t. No problem, you can go to the Post Office – after you’ve gotten out of your driveway – and pick it up. Consider your roadside box unusable until the spring thaw. Interestingly, one friend told me the mail person did get out of the truck to put a note in his box that he/she couldn’t deliver the mail because the snow was too deep! No mail – just the note, his mail was at the Post Office.
We can thank the Post Office for the opportunity for some real social interaction. After all the Post Office is better than Facebook. You actually get to see real people and have a conversation there.
In a world of robots it seems amazing no one has developed an intelligent snowplow or better yet – a snow blower that can be programmed to run the road and remove the snow without blocking driveways or narrowing the roadway by piling it on the side.
In fact, it is amazing no one has been killed by a car while walking in the roadway because the shoulder and sidewalks are covered with a deep, compacted pile of snow.
As I said, I love living in snow country. But short of us all parking our cars leaving the roads unplowed and buying snowmobiles to get around in the winter, there must be better solutions.
The white stuff comes every year here. Some years there is more than others. It makes our world incredibly picturesque, but we must develop better ways to manage it.