The spray hits the glass with the force of 48 thrown pebbles, a staccato rhythm that vibrates through the soles of my boots. Up here, 118 feet above the churning Atlantic, the world is reduced to a series of mechanical vibrations and the sharp, metallic scent of ozone. I am leaning into the gale, the brass handle of the lantern room door biting into my palm with a coldness that feels almost like a burn. Ava L.-A. at your service, though service is a strange word for a woman who spends 98 percent of her time arguing with the wind and the remaining 2 percent wondering if the ships even care about the light anymore.

It is a core frustration, this sensation of being a relic in a world that has outsourced its navigation to satellites. We are told that we must be ‘beacons’ for our communities, that we must radiate clarity and provide a fixed point for others to find their way. But being a lighthouse keeper in a digital age is an exercise in profound obsolescence. You stand there, burning 38 liters of fuel or drawing 258 kilowatts, casting a beam across a horizon where every captain is staring at a glowing blue screen on their dashboard instead of looking at the physical horizon. We have replaced the lighthouse with the algorithm, and in doing so, we’ve lost the visceral reality of the shore.

The Symphony of Static

I spent the morning organizing my files by color. It sounds like a symptom of a breakdown, doesn’t it? Perhaps it was. I sat on the floor of the gallery, surrounded by 8 drawers of paperwork dating back 18 years. I chose a deep, bruised purple for ‘Emergency Protocols’ and a cheerful, mocking yellow for ‘Daily Logs.’ It felt like I was finally imposing order on the chaos, a way to make the static of my life feel like a symphony. I have strong opinions on the color of administrative fatigue; it is definitely the shade of a dying sun. I realize now that I might have spent 108 minutes just deciding between two shades of teal for the maintenance receipts, but that is the luxury-and the curse-of this solitude. You find yourself obsessing over the trivial because the grand scale of the ocean is too terrifying to contemplate for more than 8 minutes at a time.

The Contradiction of Connectivity

People think isolation is about being alone, but they are wrong. Solitude, true solitude, is actually the ultimate connectivity. It is a contrarian angle, I know. We are conditioned to believe that we are only ‘connected’ when we are bombarded by the 598 notifications that hit our phones daily. We think that being reachable is the same thing as being present. But when I am here, watching the light sweep over the whitecaps, I am more connected to the reality of the earth than any person scrolling through a feed in a crowded coffee shop. In solitude, the noise of other people’s expectations falls away, and you are left with the terrifyingly clear signal of your own existence. You aren’t isolated; you are finally unencumbered. It is the only state in which you can actually see the ships for what they are-lost souls looking for a reference point.

The Echo in the Lantern Room

The deeper meaning of this life-and the frustration that comes with it-is the burden of keeping the light on for people who do not even see the shore. We have become a society of keepers who have no one to keep for. We curate our lives, our ‘lights,’ for an audience that is perpetually distracted. We polish the lens, we adjust the wick, and we stand at the window, but the ships are sailing by on autopilots controlled by corporations in 28 different time zones. It makes you want to turn the whole thing off just to see if anyone notices. I actually did that once, about 8 years ago. I flipped the switch and sat in the dark for 18 minutes. The silence was heavier than the light had ever been. No one called. No one signaled. The world kept spinning in its digital haze, oblivious to the fact that one fixed point on the coast of Maine had gone dark. I felt a strange mix of relief and ego-bruising insignificance. I turned it back on, of course. Not for the ships, but because the darkness was making me feel like I didn’t exist either.

We are all maintaining these structures, these versions of ourselves, against the corrosive salt of the world. It’s a physical battle as much as a mental one. The iron rusts, the paint peels, and the body wears down under the weight of 48-hour shifts and the constant spray of anxiety. We invest so much in the upkeep. In the same way a captain might fuss over the structural integrity of a hull, or a man might seek out FUE hair transplantto reclaim a hairline lost to the stress of nearly 58 years of navigating the storms of life, we are all just trying to maintain the facade of our utility. We want to look like we can still weather the gale, even when the internal gears are grinding with 288 types of friction. We repair what we can see so we don’t have to think about the parts of us that are unfixable.

The Backup for When Magic Fails

I often think about the ships that *do* see the light. There are still a few. The small-time fishermen, the poets in sailboats, the ones who have lost their electronics to a stray wave. For them, my 18-second rotation is the difference between a home-cooked meal and a watery grave. That is the relevance of the lighthouse in the modern world: it is the backup for when the magic fails. Our humanity is the fail-safe. When the GPS glitches and the screen goes black, you need a physical person standing in a cold tower, smelling of salt and color-coded files, to tell you where the land begins. We are the redundant systems of the soul.

I admit, I make mistakes. I once miscalculated the fuel consumption by 118 gallons because I was too busy staring at a particularly interesting shade of grey in the clouds. I’m not some perfect, stoic guardian. I’m a woman who talks to the seagulls and has 8 different names for the various types of fog. My files are organized by color, but my thoughts are a mess of contradictions. I hate the technology that makes me feel irrelevant, but I use a digital thermometer to check the oil temperature because the old one broke and I was too lazy to find a mechanical replacement. We are all walking contradictions, holding onto the old ways with one hand while reaching for the convenience of the new with the other.

Master of the Tower

I wonder if you ever feel that way-like you’re performing a duty that has lost its audience. Like you’re standing in your own version of a lantern room, shouting into a wind that is 88 percent static. It is a lonely realization, but there is a strange power in it. If you are the only one who knows the light is burning, then the light belongs entirely to you. You are no longer a servant of the ships; you are the master of the tower. I have spent 38 years learning that the light doesn’t just show the ships where the rocks are; it shows me where I am standing. It defines my boundaries in a world that wants to make everything boundaryless.

The Human Element

There was a storm last November-the 28th, I think-where the waves were so high they actually reached the lower gallery. The sound was like a freight train slamming into a wall of 488 pillows. I stood there, clutching my purple ‘Emergency’ folder, and I realized that I wasn’t afraid of the tower falling. I was afraid of the light staying on while I wasn’t there to watch it. The horror of the lighthouse isn’t that it might fail; it’s that it can function perfectly well without a human soul to witness the beam. That is why I stay. Not to keep the ships safe, but to keep the machine human. To ensure that there is at least one person who knows that the light is rotating at a frequency of 18 seconds, and that the brass is polished even if no one ever touches it.

We are obsessed with results, with ‘reach,’ with how many ships we guide into the harbor. But maybe the real work is just the staying. The 48 years of waking up at 4:38 AM to check the horizon. The 8 types of tea I drink to keep the chill out of my bones. The 108 color-coded folders that tell a story of a life lived in increments of maintenance. It is a quiet, frustrating, contrarian existence. And yet, when the sun goes down and the first flicker of the beam cuts through the mist, I feel a surge of $878 worth of pure, unadulterated purpose.

Protest Against the Dark

So, I will keep the files organized. I will keep the brass cold. I will keep the light turning for the 2008 ships that will never look up, and the one ship that might. Because in the end, the light isn’t a signal to the world; it’s a protest against the dark. And as long as I am here, leaning into the 78-knot winds, the dark hasn’t won yet. Do you ever stop to think about who is watching your light, or have you forgotten that you’re even carrying one?