I have always loved lighthouses. The lighthouse above, Bird Island Light, outside Marion harbor, is my favorite of all.
I can’t decide if lighthouses are adjunct to maps or their antithesis. Either way, they help us navigate. Lighthouses orient travelers as they make their way through parts unknown. Lighthouses often stand, alone and proud, on isolated points of land or islands. They warn of treacherous rocks. Lighthouses keep us safe, even in the storm.
Like the stars, they are still points of light in the otherwise impenetrable darkness. Lights that tell us where we are.
I love what lighthouses represent: steadfastness, sureness, orientation, protection. I was with some of my lighthouses this weekend. There are a few other people and places that have this effect on me, and I prize them all.
Who – and what – are your lighthouses?
My man. My girls. My words.
Great post.
My hubby for sure. My home too, I think.
At the moment mine is my husband. Beyond that I’m not sure. But I love the picture you depict here. Truly lovely.
Okay, I can’t not bite here. I grew up in Rockland, Maine, and I have a vivid memory of being afraid of a recurring source of light that flashed under my bedroom door when I was very small–I could count to ten and there it would be again, all night long. It took my mother walking me to the bathroom and holding me up to the window, so I could see the sweep of the lighthouse beacon out on the end of the breakwater, to put my childish fear at ease. And once I knew what it was, I came to love that light under my door–it became a calm and steady pulse to my bedtime ritual. And in bad weather, I got to listen to the Rockland foghorn as it cried out to the Owl’s Head foghorn, a few miles away. Owl’s Head always answered back, faint though the cry may have been.
Thank you for this post–I hadn’t thought about falling asleep in to the light of my hometown beacon in ages.
Oh what a gorgeous image – thank you.
My husband. My sister. My nonstop inner monologue that reconciles each aspect of my life back to the others. And exercise.
There was an arts center near where I grew up in Chicago where a converted mansion on the lake now housed photography classes in the basement, ceramics, painting and weaving upstairs. It was a complete respite from the rest of my life and it stood in the shadow of a lighthouse… and to this day the arts are still a lighthouse for me, a place where you half mad in the fog and gloom, a place where whales breach and ships have wrecked in storms. My kind of place.
My emotions are my lighthouse, scattered throughout my journey, beckoning and heralding that which demands attention. They instruct where to turn and where not to turn. Sometimes the directions are murky, like the murky beam of lighthouse light through a fog-laden night.
My husband. My daughter. My family. My love for words.