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Keepers of the light
By Susan Knott
Want to travel back to a simpler time? Be a lighthouse keeper for a week at Rose Island Lighthouse in Newport (R.I.) harbor. A week at Rose Island Lighthouse clears your head, slows you down, and lets you experience history firsthand. But most of all, it reconnects you to your family amid the simple rhythms of nature. No one escapes into a TV program, video game or office because you're all working and playing side by side having real conversations. And in this high-tech, high-speed world, that's worth something.
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| | Photo courtesy Susan Knott |
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The Knott family, from left -- Susan, Dina, David and Alvin -- take a ride on Rose Island Lighthouse's 32-foot Jarvis Newman lobsterboat, Starfish, as their weeklong home fades in her wake. |
This past summer, our family -- my husband Alvin and our two children, David, 10, and Dina, 6 -- worked as lighthouse keepers for a week at Rose Island Lighthouse. We left the hectic pace of New York City behind, ready to return to a simpler way of life. We felt a kinship with the gentler pace of the lighthouse keepers of a century ago. We focused on food and shelter and maintaining the light -- the basics. When you depend on the wind to generate your electricity and a good rain to provide your water, you become energy conscious on a whole new level.
We felt like genuine lighthouse keepers our very first night when we awoke at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of a blinding rainstorm. This was the moment when our predecessors would have been sounding the foghorn. We thought, wow, it might have been raining like this when former Rose Island Lighthouse keeper Charles Curtis (1887-1918) saved the lives for which he received two medals.
We didn't save any lives that night, but we still felt an urgency to do an important job at a lighthouse in a rain storm: switch the rain diverter -- a small lever that determined whether rain went into a barrel outside or into the cistern in the basement -- to provide the lighthouse with water. The first of the rain is supposed to go down the gutters into the barrel, after it washes off seagull droppings from the roof. When the barrel is full, that's the sign to put the diverter into the position allowing the clean rainwater to flow smoothly down the gutters into the cistern. We donned our slickers and ran down to the diverter to find the barrel already full and the diverter switched into the rain-collection position by the force of the rain.
Then we went back to bed for a luxurious three hours of sleep until 7:30 a.m., when we listened to and recorded the marine-weather radio broadcast. In the morning, we cooked oatmeal on the stove. In New York, we would have used instant oatmeal in the microwave, but here, the microwave in the keeper's quarters required too much precious electricity and, hey, the kids liked the real stuff better. The dirty dishwater, normally thrown out by our dishwasher at home, was now saved because it would provide a future toilet flush. Habits, they were a'changin'.
At 8 a.m., we raised the American flag to signal the mainland that we were OK. Then we read the weather instruments. Ten-year-old David enjoyed working at a real National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather station, observing and recording temperature and precipitation data in logs. That particular morning was fun because .50 inches of rain had fallen, which David was eager to measure using a National Weather Service measuring stick.
Our next chore was to pump water from a second cistern into a barrel for the outdoor toilets. Six-year-old Dina enjoyed pumping water into a watering can and teamed up with David who then primed the pump with it. We then pumped until there was enough water to flush the toilets for the day.
Both kids loved using an oar to mix chlorine in the cistern rainwater to check chlorine levels. David and Dina noted that these were the cleanest, sweetest-smelling outdoor toilets they had ever been in. When a family member needed a flush, he or she would a use a Whale Gusher pump to fill a water-closet-style tank. Then the flusher would be pulled, allowing gravity to clear out the toilet bowl.
My husband manned the generator shed and brought to bear his analytical skills in checking the Bergey wind generator. If there was not enough wind to generate the electricity we needed, he ran a diesel generator to recharge the solar batteries. We became incredibly energy conscious, often doing something together as a family using one light and immediately turning off that light if we changed location.
There were no curtains on the windows, so you realized that the idea was to use as much natural light as possible during the day and sleep when it was dark, using less electricity and returning to a natural rhythm dictated by the sun.
Lighthouse keepers were resourceful, and we, too, had to be creative when I forgot to put main courses on the shopping list I gave Alvin for his Newport grocery shopping trip. When he came back with just tortilla chips and spaghetti, it was clear that the fresh mussels David and I had harvested along the beach were now the main course. Not only were they fresh and tasty, they also steamed so quickly, they were the most energy-efficient meal we could have had.
Once chores were done, we had plenty of time to relax, read, walk around the island, and explore the shoreline for sea glass. We enjoyed meeting visitors who spent the night on the first floor of the lighthouse. Reading the journals in the overnight quarters can start the tears flowing pretty quickly. People come from all sorts of reasons, and they often leave changed for the better. The folks downstairs pour out poetry, lessons learned, and what is in their hearts. The upstairs weeklong keeper's journals reveal detailed lists of jobs well loved and well done.
This was so different from the rushed life to which we had grown accustomed that our time on the island gently forced us to be in the present moment with our family. Working with our hands freed up our hearts and minds to have conversations we wouldn't have otherwise had. We felt that this simpler life, with its slower pace, is how life is supposed to be.
"Intellectually, you know it's all brand new, but at the same time it's all very familiar," observed Cornelia Waldman, office manager of the Rose Lighthouse Foundation. "It's almost on an cellular level -- the experience touches a part of you that doesn't get touched very often."
But Rose Island Lighthouse is not only about what you experience while you work there as keepers, said Charlotte Johnson, executive director of the foundation. It's also about taking the simple and profound ways of a lighthouse keeper back into your modern world when you return home.
"I want kids like David and Dina to tell their friends about their experience," she said. "I want what they learned here about living simply, conserving energy, and caring about the environment to be passed on. The lighthouse is about preserving history, but it's also about preserving a way of life."
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