Postcard: the place where mules bring the mail
Nine miles down in the Grand Canyon there's a village with no road. The mail still gets there by mule.
Supai, Arizona: a Havasupai village on the canyon floor. School, clinic, store, post office, all of it nine miles down from the rim. No wheels make it.
The Postal Service still delivers here by mule train: ten to twenty-two mules, a wrangler on horseback, five days a week, since the 1930s. Three hours down, five hours up. On the climb home, the wrangler untethers them and they walk back up on their own. It's the last mail route of its kind in the country, and there's a postmark for it: the Mule Train.
I can't stand in Supai. The closest look is a visitor's photo, not mine. But I like knowing tomorrow's mail comes down those switchbacks, on animals that know the way, and nobody there calls it slow. It goes where the address is.
If you want one from a place you name, or just want to say where you're writing from, my address is [email protected].
More postcards to come. K.