A little over a week ago I was packing my bags and getting ready to head to San Francisco, California. I wasn’t going to be there long. My final destination was North of there. A place called Point Reyes where a lighthouse is located. A lighthouse with a very unique first order Fresnel lens.
As I stood beside my bed filling my check bag with my Lampist tools, coveralls, hardhat and various other needed items I was filled with a need to not go. Not because I didn’t want to go. I love Lampist work. It is amazing work. Work only a handful of people get to do and the Point Reyes lens was built over 151 years ago and is a 24 flash panel lens with a pink pedestal along with an internal clockwork. Something I’d never seen in my life. Of course there are a plethora of other one of a kind features of this particular lens and I could talk endlessly about here and now but I wont. This is about my desire to not leave.
I didn’t want to leave because I hate leaving my home. My wife, my daughter and my life. What also made it especially difficult was the fact that it was my daughters last week at home before she left for college. A week that would be a whirlwind of activity of her. Packing, doing laundry, shopping, stressing, breaking down, worrying and just being a teenager needing her father. A father who was on the other side of the continent working on a 151 year old aid to navigation because it was an opportunity of a lifetime and no on can tell you to pass those opportunities up.
So I did my best to not break down. I stayed as strong as I could. I packed my check bag. I packed my carry on bag. I double checked everything. Then I went downstairs and cuddled with my family for as long as I could. My alarm was set for 0430. My flight was at 0700 which meant I had to be at the airport by 0600. All that meant to me was that I had to be out of the house by at the latest 0530. By midnight, we were all asleep. Happy and warm in the comfort of warm family cuddles and hugs.
At 0530 I kissed my daughters forehead and brushed her hair with my fingertips and whispered “I love you and I’m going to miss you.”
She murmured something unintelligible back to me and I left feeling I was doing the right thing.
There is a nickname for August in Point Reyes, it’s called “Fogust”. They even write it on the weather board at the visitors center. Which was closed when we were there because, well, we were there to take apart the lens. You know… construction. The nickname didn’t deceive. It was foggy.
So foggy that we we didn’t even see the cows crossing the road to the lighthouse and almost hit them. Oh, I didn’t tell you? The lighthouse is on a National Park and the National Park leases the land to dairy farms and ranchers and the cows are pretty much free range. As are the mule deer, the suicide quail that run out in front of your tires, the coyotes and the feral cats that seem to be everywhere as well. The average speed limit is 40 mph, but in the fog, you best have cow insurance coverage. Otherwise, you’re screwed. Oh, and it’s an hour ride from the nearest town so you better pack a lunch while waiting for a tow truck.
The walk down to the lens is 308 steps at a 10 degree grade, at least, as well as two concrete ramps that are at least 150 feet long. My first trip down I thought my knees were going to pop out of my legs and dive into the pacific in protest. The view, what little I could see of it, was a 300 foot drop off of rocky death covered in ice plants and red moss into unseen crashing waves. “And the Lighthouse Keeper bounced four times before he hit the ocean.” a voice carried to my ears in the wind followed by laughter. My fellow lampists making a lighthouse joke. I laughed as well. Stories of how difficult life in the Lighthouse service is legendary amongst us and in literature. “Not after he stole and returned a government horse, drunk.” another voice said. Followed by another round of laughter. Then I added “The horse or the Lighthouse Keeper?” and another round of laughter.
Gallows humor. It keeps our mind off our pain and on our mission. I’m 51 and the youngest amongst the gang. Hell, there are 6 certified Lampists in the country and I’m the only apprentice. I make 7. Only 3 Lampists are working. When I become a Lampist, I’ll be number 4. We have to have a sense of humor. For our work to save this history in a world that has lost its concern for the artisans who made these amazing pieces of art and machines seems very important to us and a growing number of others. Yet technology has easily replaced the bronze, glass and brass beasts that once protected the commerce and sailors with their prismatic beauty that Augustin Fresnel perfected over 200 years ago.
When we got to the bottom of the steps we didn’t immediately go into the lighthouse. No, that would be like skipping the prom dance and the after party and going straight to the hotel room. Instead we we went into the fog house, unloaded our gear, went over our initial preparations, got our assignments, got our cameras, gave directions to our carpenters which was great because normally we do our own carpentry and then and only then did Woody, our leader pull the lighthouse keys from his pocket and lead us to the lighthouse.
We fell in behind him. Lockstep. I being the apprentice was last in the house.
The pink pedestal was hard to miss. It is the only one of it’s kind and will soon be changed back to Lighthouse Service green. The three crystal clear, one-hundred and fifty-one year old beveled glass doors housing the brass clockwork and crank that lifts the seventy pound weight is truly an artistic truth to mankind’s endeavor at machinery, when I looked up I saw someone had turned the light on inside the lens itself. The curtains were still drawn covering the windows and the prisms from the lower-catodioptrics, the dioptrics and the upper-catodioptrics were light into the room above. Some of the cracked lenses were casting small rainbows here and there onto the curtains. Someone moved the curtains, the light was bounced and things moved. We stood there in quite retrospective. It was magical. I smiled. I pulled my phone out and started taking pictures.
I reached out with my hand and put my hand on a fan leg, where I expected to fell cold, hard cast-iron, I was greeted with cool brass. I looked up and saw shiny ornamental legs that belonged in a museum. They reminded me of scallop shells they were so beautiful. I stepped back to get a better view and that’s when I realize the entire lens was sitting on jacks. The chariot wheels were still there but the three lens jacks were also in place. Another first for me. Brass and iron no more than five inches tall each holding up over a ton of steel, brass, bronze and glass. I was aghast. I reached out and touched them. I had to. I’d never seen them in use, only in pictures.
Woody was talking. Tommy was talking. Jim was talking. I was absorbing. Absorbing everything. Trying to figure everything out. The jacks were easy. The clockwork, easy. The guide wheels, easy. The driveshaft, easy.
Then everyone moved upstairs. I followed.
This lens was not just a first for me. It was a first for all of us. It is the most beautiful I’ve seen. The most beautiful I’ve had the privilege to work on and the most beautiful to dis-assemble. But talking about that here and now is not the place.
Let me just say this, she is amazing, she is fragile, she is tender, she is secretive and she is as strong as she is lovely. I hope we all do her proud during this evolution of renovation.
Have a great week.
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