The lighthouse stands on a rocky outcrop at the end of Browns road. I venture out there pretty much every time I am here. This morning though I was glad to be alone on my venture. At the end of the road, the pavement turns to gravel and the potholes are deep enough to jerk the steering wheel from the tightest of grips. This day though I proceeded onto the gravel and was met with a barrier of stones that must have been at least two and a half feet high. I pulled the van to the side and got out to walk.
My immediate thought was that kids were out here again, as is so often the case, to vandalize the property. As I made my way down the old and uneven path I could see the cliff had gave way behind the breakwater and the road narrowed down to a single tire path. Erosion, wearing away at the coast, I thought, wow the power of nature. The breakwater is at least ten feet high above water and is a framework of what looks like railway ties and rock.
As I neared the lighthouse though, the graffiti on the base as high as the hand could reach reminded me that this is a place where the kids play. Well maybe not kids but at least teenagers. I have heard the stories and heard the sounds late at night as the light circles the bay and the foghorn signals the ships.
A sudden nostalgia rushes through me. The feeling of what it is like to be young and out late, after dark, while your parents think you are over at a friends. This is not a nostalgia of the island, just a remembrance of youth that we all can relate to. The type of memory that, as a parent now, makes me shudder, but as a dream makes me fond of simpler times. The first touch, the first kiss, the first time. A few drinks, under age of course, and those fond pastimes of puberty and youth.
As I walk the area I know it is not just the absence of better things for the youth to do here that draws them out to party and play at this spot, but the isolation and lack of parental supervision. Those things that are so natural and hard to resist and it is with those fond memories I relive my past through this place. So as the generations come and go, here is a place of renewal to all the young. The tower standing so phalic on the shore while erosion wears away, and comes nearer and nearer to its foundation. Yet it shines its light over the sea and over the depths without fail, season by season, year by year, as a beacon to those trying to find their way.
I can see a small area where a fire had burned and a flattened out path as if bent over by blankets and a few young bodies out in the night. A song comes to mind. I think it is "Blowers Daughter" by Damien Rice, and the lyrics repeated, "I can't take my eyes off of you, I can't take my mind off of you....", and so it is....
B
