![]() ![]() ![]() “I need people who are high-energy for May to November,” says Schultz. While volunteering itself isn’t complicated (especially in the off season), summers can get busy. As for my volunteer work, whenever I would complete a task-whether it was sweeping the living room floor or picking up garbage outside-I’d proudly mark it off on a photocopied worksheet that had been left atop the dining room table. ![]() There, I learned about Sarah Lane, Mission Point’s first and only (official) female keeper studied a display of nautical knots and examined a chart of Michigan water levels from 1937 to the present day, which lighthouse manager Ginger Schultz updates annually. Back inside, I took advantage of the silence to read and write, then spent time perusing the on-site museum. For me, volunteer keeping was an opportunity to enjoy (though some might say endure) a similar type of solitude and bask in the history of such a storied place.ĭuring my free time, I walked the lighthouse grounds, which include a thickly wooded forest of oak and cedar trees, and a stretch of beach where the lake churns up deposits of Petoskey stones (fossilized bits of coral with a unique hexagon pattern). Still, despite the many differences between being an actual keeper and a volunteer keeper, it’s impossible not to feel some sort of connection to those who came before. My toughest work was removing all the carcasses of Asian lady beetles that had slipped into the lantern deck for warmth. They were often quite isolated from the rest of the world and occasionally took a physical hand in saving lives, often at the risk of their own. To ensure that the light reached its full distance, lightkeepers also continuously cleaned the tower windows, keeping them from indoor soot and outdoor dirt. Not only was their job to help guide ships to port at night and during foul weather, including thick fog and heavy storms, but they also had to trim the wick of the tower lantern-first fueled by whale oil, and later kerosene-every four hours, without removing the burner from the lens. Helena Island Light Station in Mackinac County, two miles offshore from the Upper Peninsula.īut while my own experience included a little light housekeeping and some yard work, the responsibilities of actual lightkeepers-before automation in the 20th century made the job obsolete-were much more demanding. It’s likely also the reason it hosts the bulk of the country’s volunteer keeper programs- more than a dozen of them, from the DeTour Reef Light on the northern end of Lake Huron to St. This is due to its position among four of the five Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie. Outside the Mission Point Lighthouse is a stretch of beach where the lake churns up deposits of Petoskey stones.Īs it turns out, Michigan is home to more lighthouses than any other state-about 129 of them. This often includes bringing on volunteers to help with the upkeep, greet visitors and even stay overnight-all opportunities that drew me to Michigan’s Mission Point Lighthouse, perched on the tip of Old Mission Peninsula 17 miles north of Traverse City, for two days in April. In many cases, the Coast Guard maintains the lights but doesn’t have a budget to care for the structures, so local nonprofits, federal agencies like the National Park Service or private citizens step up to purchase or manage them. There are just under 800 lighthouses currently standing in the U.S., a number that can slightly fluctuate depending on a person’s definition of “lighthouse.” (Some counts include unofficial lights, meaning they’ve never been listed as Coast Guard navigational aids and are more like sculptural pieces, such as the Robert Manning Memorial Lighthouse in Empire, Michigan.) According to D’Entremont, about half of these lighthouses are active. lighthouses that offer “volunteer keeper” programs tend to get booked up months, if not years, in advance. They’ve got hundreds of years of history, and they tend to exist in some really beautiful and dramatic places.” (North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras Lighthouse alone has approximately 500,000 visitors per year.) “Lighthouses were built for nothing but altruistic reasons, helping to aid navigation and to save lives and property. “I call it catching the lighthouse bug,” says Jeremy D’Entremont, historian for the United States Lighthouse Society, referring to the reasons millions of people visit U.S. Yet I felt secure standing beside the fifth-order Fresnel lens, a beacon that once shone up to 13 miles from the lantern deck atop Mission Point Lighthouse, lighting the way for many lost sailors. Strange really, since these cold, deep waters are home to dozens of well-preserved shipwrecks, vessels from the late 1800s and early 1900s that became the victims of unpredictable storms while shipping lumber and other maritime commerce. Looking out over the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay, a part of Lake Michigan, I felt a sense of calm. ![]()
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