A 67-year-old veteran in Estcourt Station has trash and recycling collection, a telephone, electricity and a paved road, but he cannot get mail.
The northernmost Mainer lives in an old house on Rue de la Frontière, a paved road that goes in and out of the United States before it reaches a little park beside Kelly Rapids. He has a few seasonal neighbors on the American side of the border, but is the only one who lives and votes in Maine.
Stahlman bought his house in 2017, relying on the twice-a-week mail service to allow him to pay his bills, correspond with the U.S. Veterans Administration and cast absentee ballots by mail.
Yet since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the the United States Postal Service has ceased bringing mail to or from Estcourt Station. As an alternative, it offered to give Stahlman a free post office box he could only reach by driving on 38 miles of private logging roads or making a wide circle through Canada on 60 miles of paved highway.