A white commercial van was parked near my mailbox when I carried my coffee out to the porch.

A man in a high-visibility vest was hammering a wooden stake into the frozen dirt near the road.

I walked down the gravel driveway.

Yesterday’s mud was frozen solid in the deep treads of my work boots.

“You’re past the property line,” I said.

The man looked up from a clipboard.

He had a thick gray beard and wire-rimmed glasses.

He checked the screen of a GPS device strapped to his thick wrist.