Passing Through
The lantern culminates the lighthouse experience. It is the sentinel’s crown and source of amazing influence. For it is a place where a guiding light resides, where seascapes both placid and tumultuous are beheld, and where history still abides in spirited feeling.
The parapet, panes and cupola comprise this multi-sided realm – bright and vented. The bygone lighthouse keepers knew such surroundings well. They spent many an hour in the lantern polishing the Fresnel lens, trimming the wicks and tidying up every surface about them.
Of course, there were the times when duty beckoned keepers beyond, onto a wind-blown gallery burdened by forbidding elements. Outside they would go to where storms raged, cold encumbered and fog obscured - faithful to a directive of the highest importance.
When experiencing the interior of a lantern today, it is easy to envision light going forth far into the night to warn of dangers unseen. Outside a lantern, the mind can imagine intense elements buffeting and adhering. But a lantern is also a gateway as well.
A guiding light is certainly dispatched from a lantern, and yet this passageway also reflects the splendid environment that a lighthouse majestically presides over. Look closely, and one will discover something more – history’s odyssey that has no end.
For a lantern is a repository for the flow of maritime endeavors that have passed through its panes. As the here and now shines for a fleeting moment at a lighthouse, it must invariably give way to time’s tireless expansion the very next instant.
Did what just transpire disappear from sight evermore? Most would say yes, but I believe otherwise. If a light tower within holds tight to echoes of the past, then a lantern assuredly accrues illuminated scenes that have journeyed to and fro its threshold.
How can I know? A lantern pane’s reflection tells me so!
You enable us to see a lighthouse and its impact on history in a different perspective--right up to the moment we are privileged to view its sword of brilliance in person. Thank you.
As Cheryl has commented, your words and photos cause us to view lighthouses in a unique way, merging both their past and present reverently. Thank you Bob!