Spent last week as Assistant Lighthouse Keepers at Cabot Head Lighthouse on the Bruce Peninsula. As the lighthouse is no longer operational, duties were light. (There is a fully automated and solar-powered beacon on a tower next to the original lighthouse.) Essentially we were living in and helping to look after the museum. This amounted to sweeping the stairs and putting out the sign. Also, I signed a paper for the fire inspector. And I shooed some tourists out of the gift-shop (in the lighthouse keeper's house, not shown) which was closed for the day while the keepers were away. And we counted the tourists -- maybe 15-20 a day. Otherwise, blessed silence and solitude.
Don't think I've every actually watched birds before, but found the cormorants, loons, terns and the cedar waxwings who congregated in a dead tree, quite absorbing. (I mean, it was just the waxwings in the dead tree, not the whole lot of them.) Isabella saw a bald eagle over Wingfield Basin from the tower one morning. Splendid vista of Georgian Bay from the tower and once in the middle of the night I went into the tower and the sky was glorious. (Don't especially like that word, glorious, but I've already used splendid.)
The week started cool but by the end it was hot and the bugs were jumping, making walks on the rocky beach short and nasty. How is it that in a strong wind a deer-fly can still hover in your face? When I put up my hoodie I felt like monk. When we parted the keeper told Isabella "I don't know if we can have you back, you make too much noise!" We were like hermits. Sometimes I wish I liked people. I mean I do but ... once last year when I was going through a bout of insomnia, Isabella said, "Imagine you are on a beach." and I said, "No, I couldn't, there might be people there."
