Island on fire
It’s been a trying few weeks – and I’ve lagged behind on my island updates. It seems like the whole world is on fire. Part of Peaks Island was, in fact, recently up in flames. On Monday, our lovely little post office caught fire. Fortunately, no one was injured, and the cause appears accidental.
The Peaks Island post office is one of the handful of municipal and community buildings around the island. It probably represents 20% of the public places on Peaks, alongside the library, public safety building, water district, and old power station. Before the pandemic, the post office served as a hub for conversation and camaraderie. Even during quarantine, the post office’s doors have remained open, ready to ship and receive packages for islanders and visitors alike. We can’t just run out the door to Target – and so we get a lot of packages out here.
For me, the post office is iconic of our (or any!) small Maine island community – a visible indicator that this place exists and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Think: “Hey, we have a post office. And a zip code. We’re legit!”
Last summer when Kellie, Q, and I took a road trip – and a subsequent boat trip – to Isle Au Haut we encountered a similar island community post office. Perched on the side of the road, this beacon of the USPS has to be one of the smallest post offices in America. It’s literally a shed. You might even classify it as a shack – a well-maintained, adorable mail shack. The Voice of America did a story about small town post offices in a time of COVID, highlighting Isle Au Haut’s pocked-sized gem. It’s worth a read – and a visit to Isle Au Haut when the world reopens.
If you’re at all worried about us islanders getting mail, fret not. I was delighted to bike by the Peaks Post Office yesterday to see a new addition on the street: a mobile postal center, which is basically a big mail truck with a manned service counter on the side. Food truck meets stamp machine. It appears the unofficial motto of the Postal Service rings true out here on Peaks: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”