Why Write a Book About Lighthouses?

What is it about lighthouses that makes them iconic symbols in our culture? Even the staunchest enthusiast would admit that lighthouses are an obsolete technology as far as maritime navigation goes. We have radar now. GPS, internet — sophisticated navigational systems that dwarf the effectiveness of blinking coastal towers. 

Nonetheless, I’ve noticed that many people have a profound affinity for lighthouses. Let me give an example.

On our honeymoon in Hawaii, my wife and I stumbled into a beachside restaurant in search of lunch. We made our way to the bar where we sat in front of a man mixing drinks. He had the distinct signature of a local — numb to swarms of tourists snapping photos of the sunset in his hometown.

I noticed, as he reached for a bottle of coconut rum, that he had a lighthouse tattooed on his leg. I whispered as much into my wife’s ear, and she had the courage to ask him about it.

“On your calf,” she started. “Is that a particular lighthouse?”

The man paused for a moment, blinking. The question jarred him from his routine of filling shot glasses and muddling limes.

“No. But there’s something I like…” He thought for a moment. “No matter what it is — the weather, whatever — lighthouses are steady. They mean something to me.”

That moment stuck with me. It made me think about what a lighthouse really is. A promise of steadiness and resilience; something that can stand the tests of time. 

My interest in lighthouses was just like that of the bartender — disembodied from an actual structure — until my wife and I took a road trip to Mendocino, California. We expected to spend a few days enjoying the rugged coastline and squinting at redwoods. But on our northward drive, we encountered something unexpected. A sign off the highway announced that we were approaching the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse. With nothing but time on our hands, we parked in a sleepy lot. The lighthouse, we read on a placard, was waiting for us down the road.

We took the roundabout path through a field of blond, winter grass. Windproof cypresses stood in a row to our left and the ocean roared beneath the seacliffs. It was cold, with sharp wind and dew that bordered on rain. I stopped in my tracks when I set my eyes on the lighthouse. The tower wasn’t tall and the structure only consisted of a single room. But against the chaos of the coastline, the light station emanated a sense of peace and calm. Four beams shot out of the lens like a coordinate plane, sweeping over the horizon the same way it’s done since 1909.

The Point Cabrillo Lighthouse, we learned from the docent, is not just any light station. Miraculously, it still has its original, third-order Fresnel lens. I’ll discuss Fresnel lenses in future posts — but it suffices to say that they revolutionized maritime navigation and the field of optics. They’re also quite rare, given the time and expense of hand-crafting them. When lighthouses were decomissioned in the 1970s, most lenses were vandalized or damaged by the elements. Remarkably, Point Cabrillo’s lens remained perfectly intact.

As we were preparing to leave the lighthouse, the docent encouraged us to stay in the lighthouse if we ever found ourselves in Mendocino again.

“You can stay here?!” I asked.

“Sure. The original keeper’s quarters can be rented out, along with the old carriage houses.”

All of the rooms were booked during our dates...so we extended our time in Mendocino. If given the chance to stay at the Four Seasons in Maui or the carriage house at Point Cabrillo Lighthouse — which may or may not be filled with its original furnishings — I’d take the lighthouse seven days out of the week. Tucked away from the highway and sitting on thirty acres of undeveloped land, Point Cabrillo gave us the opportunity to take a backwards leap in time. At dusk, I watched the lens take hold as the sun dropped below the ocean’s limb. Again, I was mesmerized by the revolving beams. Three times that night, I rose from bed to take long, dark walks and watch the lighthouse do its work.

The next morning, I told my wife that I was going to write a book about a lighthouse.

I still don’t have a concise answer for why we revere lighthouses, but I think we’re drawn to them for something deeper than their beauty. I think they signify something that all of us want to cultivate — not in the past, but in the present and future.

Steadiness and resilience. The ability to stand the test of time.