Lux Aeterna
Lux Aeterna started because I impulsively joined Sarah von Bargen’s Get What You Want Club, and I needed a goal.
That’s the short answer.
The long answer (and with me, they’re *all* long answers…) is that, somewhere around 16/17/18, I started fantasizing about taking a solo cycling/backpacking trip. It started reasonably enough, the desire to bike the distance from our cabin to Sturgeon Point light. I wanted to see the scenery in slow motion (slower than the speed limit on US-23, anyway.) I wanted to be able to stop every 10 feet to take photos of the ferns and cattails and ancient apple trees and the sprinkling of derelict houses around Harrisville, MI.
Unfortunately, my brain thrives on novelty, and the bigger and more impossible the novelty, the better, so the fantasy soon began spiraling into a distant wish that I could plan a solo cycling/backpacking trip AROUND THE GREAT LAKES to see ALL the lighthouses.
…Please keep in mind that I was an adventurous, but sheltered teenager. I strongly preferred my own company over social situations, and I wasn’t even allowed to ride my bike on the main roads at home, much less across multiple states. Needless to say, this was something that was not ever happening.
But there was something about that little seed of desire to see ALL the lighthouses that lived dormant in my soul for the next 20 years. And so, when I encountered Sarah and her (erstwhile) goal-setting course, I knew that what I wanted wasn’t a job promotion or to renovate my kitchen. (And, like, if you do want those things, that’s fantastic! It’s just not where I’m at.)
Lux Aeterna is one part unashamed, self-indulgent desire to travel the upper quadrant of the United States (and the lower quadrant of Canada). But it’s also an exploration of the emotional life of inanimate objects. Lighthouses are oft-romanticized, purpose-built structures. The people who manned them often did so in near-solitude, in treacherous conditions, in less-than-hospitable locations. These people relied on the light for shelter, for their livelihood, the surrounding land for their sustenance, and the light likewise relied on its keeper for maintenance, to keep the sea out of its bricks and concrete, to keep the wicks trimmed and the lamps lit. Much like the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, when something is exposed to that much care and love and human life, it begins to take on a Life all its own.
What, then, happens to the abandoned, derelict lights in open water? The places people no longer maintain, or even visit? Overgrown and crumbling on the shore of distant northern lakes? The places left to keep their solitary watch alone, until Entropy comes to claim them? What happens to these places in an era that no longer needs them? When GPS, sonar and radar render them obsolete? What happens when the eternal watch becomes an impotent observer, with no one to alert to danger, no one to muster to safety?
And why do we choose some to save, to lovingly restore, while so many others wither silently?