Beacons

We climbed my favorite lighthouse today, the one that’s tattooed on my arm with my daughter’s name (which means “shining light”)…

The headland was shrouded with fog, the lighthouse a barely-visible landmark as we pulled up on the motorcycle, and the wind whipping so hard we were grateful for the wind-proof construction of bike jackets! 

Halfway down the cliffside steps to the tide pools and “cobble” beach below, a gentleman invited us to look through the two telescopes he had set up—one trained on nesting cormorants with chicks, the other on harbor seals lounging on the rocks. Gazing at the indigo-edged wings of a cormorant, I was wishing I could take a photo… And then started to wonder at my own apparent need to “capture” everything that happens. 

Jon already teases me for snapping photos of everything, and for blogging about everything—and here I am sitting by our campfire and doing it some more, reflecting on the page (well, on my phone-screen, if we’re going to get literal about it). I think it’s my way of making the most of the moments I’m having—getting the most out of them, finding their meaning, making them last.

The front of my journal says “Collect moments, not things.” I’m not at all a souvenir person—I’m the shutterbug instead, and the blogger. Photos and words are the best ways I know to make moments last as memories. 

So I have pictures today. The bacon cooking next to our coffee-pot on the camp stove in golden morning light. The geometrical black iron steps and whitewashed walls of the staircase spiraling up the lighthouse tower. The silhouettes of two friends we met for dinner against a sunset view of the harbor.

And words for the moments and things that don’t fit pictures. Like the telescope views, the harbor’s fog horn, the movement of anemones in a tide pool, the saltwater-spray on my motorcycle visor….

Today I’m picturing the “collected” moments as beacons that can shine forward as memories… maybe focused by words-and-photos like that lighthouse beam through its Fresnell lens. 

I guess I’m just a recorder by nature. I like to take notice of my own life.