Crossing the Bar—Scenes from the North Head Lighthouse
Last Updated on Monday, 08 March 2010 10:42 Written by Lisa Anjozian Monday, 08 March 2010 00:00
Strange calm for a winter’s day in February at the Washington Coast: winds, 5 to 10 miles per hour; temperature, 60 degrees; ocean, flat and searingly white; sky, cleaned of any notion of weather. Sitting on the solid basalt headland jutting into the Pacific, 190 feet above flat waters—a white obelisk. Hieroglyphic characters visible through windows that encircle its top 65 feet above its base are changing patterns in pulses of movement and stasis. Closer and closer, the hieroglyphs resolve into people. “You have to go up,” says a young man who has his arm around a woman as they walk up the trail. “You can see all the way to the Olympic Mountains today.”
“$2.50,” says the guard, and on up the tight, winding staircase that clings to tapered walls. One more step, and then it is nothing but view, designed that way, its purpose manifest. Hollis says the original 19th century lens, a first order Fresnel lens, burned five gallons of kerosene a night, a guiding light that could be seen twenty miles out at sea. Hollis’ white hairs are closely shaved around his ears, the rest a mystery, obscured by his ball cap. He wears a buttoned-down shirt and an open smile. Creases around his eyes deepen, the lids hiding most of his iris and sclera the bigger his smile gets. A volunteer interpreter, he is narrating the history of the lighthouse and the natural history of the land. Here for a four hour shift through all kinds of weather, and not for the pay.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows that allow the sun to roast whoever is present this day, the 360 degree visual limit is as far as the horizon will allow. The young man is correct—almost 200 miles to the north, bright snow on the Olympic Mountains, sitting on their quiet peninsula. To the south, and much closer geographically, a vessel is entering the mouth of the Columbia River. Up and up and up it goes, past the ends of the jetties and into the river, having survived the Graveyard of the Pacific. Someone’s ship has come in. Hollis says that before the jetties were built, the mouth of the Columbia kept moving. There is no delta—fresh water pours with the power of a fire hose out into the ocean. Shifting sandbars require a ship’s pilot licensed for a Columbia River bar crossing. This day, all the elements look hospitable.
“You have to hear this,” Hollis says. “One day in the ‘30s when the wind was really hard, it blew a duck into the window and it crashed through and chipped the lens. Otherwise, these windows are weather-tight.” This day, a place to linger. Back outside, on the trail to the lighthouse keeper’s residence—there: A good spot to take a picture of the obelisk at the edge of a continent. A man and woman punch up the plunging slope, up to the trail. “You got to climb down there,” he says, pointing to the brushy draw that is tilted to a blue depth. “You’ll get an incredible shot.” A day of strangeness and strangers, all eager to share their beauties.
A short interlude and another couple up the trail, and a pause, and a turn. “Oh,” the woman says, “I see why you stopped here. Nice shot. You got it framed with the trees. What else should we see?”
