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For a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Old Lighthouses Offer New Thrills

The wood steps were narrow and shallow and steep, more ladder rungs than stairs, rising nearly vertically as if to a tree house.

It was a white-knuckle climb of three flights. The blind descent would prove more unnerving. No matter, even for someone with an aversion to heights the round trip was well worth taking.

The reward at the top, 60 feet in the sky, was a 360-degree view to treasure – open sea as far as the eye could see. This “tree house,” round as a giant sequoia, was made of brick and covered by white shingles.

The Point Prim Lighthouse is the oldest seafarer’s beacon on Canada’s Prince Edward Island. It marks the entrance at the outer waters of Charlottetown Harbor.

If you were asked to close your eyes and imagine an iconic lighthouse, Point Prim Lighthouse is what you would conjure. Hollywood would cast it in a movie. Solitarily situated on a thumb of land jutting into the turbulent seas, the tapering tower is topped by a fire engine-red crow’s nest, the cherry on top.

This stanza from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Lighthouse” perfectly suggests the guiding beacon at Point Prim:

“The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,

“And on its outer point, some miles away,

“The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,

“A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.”

The lantern room atop the massive masonry at Point Prim today features an energy-efficient solar light as its modern “fire by night.” Originally, however, when built in 1845, four lamps fueled by seal oil provided its beaming light.

Next came kerosene lamps, twelve used in unison here, offering a brighter navigational signal.

Angus Murchison, Point Prim’s lightkeeper from 1920-1955, was said to be so “in tune” to the intensity of the kerosene light at night that even while he slept he could perceive when the beacons began to dim. As if by sixth sense, he would jolt awake and refill the lamps in time to keep mariners safe.

• As vigilant steward of the light for 35 years, Angus was the longest serving of the succession of 16 keepers who lived at the Point Prim Lighthouse. However, he was not the lone Murchison to perform the lonely task – his son, grandson, and great-grandson followed in his footsteps up the steep ladder/stairs.

With astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first footstep on the moon in 1969, electricity at long last replaced kerosene as the light source at Point Prim. With this belated modernization, Mason Murchinson retired as its final keeper and a romantic era ended.

Touring a lighthouse makes time skip backward. Savoring the view from the lantern room, even on a T-shirt-warm clear day, one could imagine a ship in the distance, in the night, in a storm or in the fog, relying on this shepherding “pillar of fire.”

A visit to nearby Wood Island Lighthouse, 20 miles southwest on the Northumberland Straight, was equally enchanting. Prior to being built in 1876, its founder, Donald Duncan MacMillan, displayed a simple kerosene lantern in the second-story bedroom window of his house to aid sailors.

The poem “The Light-Keeper” by Robert Louis Stevenson hangs on a wall inside the Wood Island Lighthouse and includes these powerful lines:

“The life of the light-keeper,

“Held on high in the blackness

“In the burning kernel of night,

“The seaman sees and blesses him.”

No lightkeeper could have saved the Titanic and earned its captain’s blessing. In consequence, 121 victims of the iceberg disaster are buried in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia – the next port on my travels.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon