Vacation Chronicles: Lighthouse Lessons

"The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't."--Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon.

I climbed the first hundred stairs, the late July heat making my tank top and shorts stick to my skin. I stopped to rest on one of the landings where my friend Mary was waiting for me to catch up. "Why are we doing this again?" I asked breathlessly while I basked in the ocean breeze blowing in through a window behind us. "Because we've never done it before," she replied matter-of-factly and smiled her beautiful determined smile, reminding me of why I'd nicknamed her Mary Sunshine years prior. "Right," I agreed and pressed on, only 168 steps left to go before we reached the top. Stepping out onto the observation deck at the top is like a visual slap of magic, as the sea stretches out and kisses the horizon. You are left to wonder, however brief and illogical, if it goes on forever. We'd done it; we'd climbed to the top of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse in the United States and the rewards were a cool breeze to soothe hot, sweaty bodies and a view that is a reminder of just how small we really are compared to the vastness of so many other things.

Even though the wind is noisy at the top, it is not the same kind of irritating noise that everyday life often inundates us with from a hundred different directions. I watched the sea caress the golden, sandy shore and wondered at all the life teeming beneath the water's surface. Standing at this great height, I was gloriously happy to be above the surface of the Earth, my problems left almost forgotten "down there." Of course, we couldn't stay up there forever, so with reluctance and one last look, we made our way back down, offering encouragement to those we passed who were on their way up. Coming down is easier than slogging up, but the view from the bottom can and often is just as spectacular. Finding beauty from both places is all a matter of adjusting one's perspective. This is applicable to climbing lighthouses (or mountains, or sand dunes, or trees, etc.), as well as strolling through life.

---