On December 8th, I ordered a couple of t-shirts from a Michigan-based clothing company I’ve ordered from a few times before. I like their tees, as well as the idea of supporting a Michigan company and keeping my carbon footprint smaller. The US Postal Service had other ideas.
First, I missed the company’s “holiday shipping window,” which resulted in a delay. No big deal; the shirts were not gifts, just a selfish purchase for myself.
Finally, twenty days later I got an email that they had shipped and I would receive them on December 31st.
I did not.
But I do have some travel history.
- The USPS picked my items up in Gaylord, Michigan, roughly 100 miles from my house, on December 28th.
- My package arrived in Grand Rapids later the same day.
- The package left Grand Rapids the next day, on the 29th.
- Later that day, it arrived in Detroit, which is odd because now it’s well over two hours from my house and going in the wrong direction.
- On December 30th, the package arrived at the “next facility.” I assumed the Mt. Pleasant post office. I was wrong.
- On December 31st, the package arrived in (I kid you fucking not) Seattle, Washington. Yeah, the one over 2,500 miles from my house.
- A few days later, on January 3rd, it arrived back in the midwest at a shipping facility in Indiana.
- Later that evening, it arrived in Detroit, Michigan.
- Currently, it is January 5th, and “moving through the network” and still not at my house. But my two T-shirts have traveled over 5,000 miles.
My would-be small carbon footprint has become one giant, gaping, fucking hole in the ground, spewing emissions and chemicals into the air because I ordered t-shirts from a company an hour away from my house that were meant to celebrate my love of being in the woods chasing birds and critters with my camera. To quote the title of my favorite Blur album, “modern life is rubbish.”
Lola doesn’t know what to think.
Later.
THE SOILED SOUNDS TRACK OF THE POST