Welcome to Our World

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, photographed from the sand dunes to the east of the light minutes before sunset.

Wow! We are hard at work here on Cape Hatteras – harder than we are used to. Lots of responsibilities for the safety of the visitors to the lighthouse.

Yesterday and today were spent in intensive training. It seemed endless and comprehensive. We were taken to the top of the light – 257 steps inside a brick tube that’s the tallest lighthouse in North America. There are eight landings along the journey – a good place to stop and regain your breath. It’s hot and humid inside the tower. In fact, the heat index is watched carefully by the staff and radio reports are made every half hour regarding relative humidity and the temperature inside the structure. This results in a heat index. If that heat index hits 103 degrees, the lighthouse is closed for safety reasons.

If the wind at the top of the lighthouse gusts above 40 miles an hour, the balcony is closed. You can still climb the lighthouse and you can look out to the south at the top. But you are not permitted to stroll around the balcony. The balcony was closed this afternoon when wind gusts were recorded at 43 miles an hour.

I’m working the base of the lighthouse for an hour and a half after lunch tomorrow. The person at the base has the responsibility for warning of safety procedures for those who are about to climb. It is mostly a series of No this and No that. No carrying children. No bare feet. No chewing gum. No tripods. No backpacks. No pets. No tobacco products. When you get to the top: No spitting. No throwing stuff off. No. No. No.

I, of course, wanted to know if people jump off the top. The answer is Yes! Doesn’t happen often and you are told when the public asks the question, you simply say, “Not since I’ve been here!” Our Ranger/instructor Lori told me, however that a newly married man in 2003 climbed to the top the day after his marriage and threw himself to his death. Not a good start to a marriage.

Jo will be stationed at the top of the tower the same time I’m at the base.  Her job will be to answer question of the climbers. She’ll also take their picture (if they ask); explain how the lighthouse was moved 2,900 feet in 23 days in July, 1999. This astonishing engineering feat was accomplished by excavating under the lighthouse, inserting I-beams, jacking up the beams and the lighthouse and then pushing the entire structure, very slowly, on a track until the lighthouse was moved away from the encroaching ocean to a safer location. The lighthouse keepers’ two cottages also were relocated in the same relationship to the original location.

I’ll start out my day in the museum, where two lighthouse keepers and their families used to live. This is a wooden two-story construction that’s filled with historic material and pictures that range from a captain’s hat from one of the dozens of U-boats that ranged off the East coast at the beginning of World War II.  There are more than 500 sunken ships off the coast on the Outer Banks of North Carolina – truly a graveyard of the Atlantic.

After my 90 minutes at the base of the lighthouse, I’ll go to the Visitor’s Center to answer questions from arriving visitors. It’s a long day and doesn’t feel like retirement to me. We’re here for six weeks and we’ll decide at the end of that time if we are up to such a heavy-duty volunteer commitment.