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The following is an account of life at Cape Sarichef Lighthouse in Alaska, as written in 1935. Because of its extreme historical significance, we have published the story in its entirety.
Life monotonous at my lighthouse? Judge for yourself. The tower clings to a cliff on Unimak-an island called The Roof of Hell by the Russians, who first saw its many mountains smoking like chimneys. Four of those live volcanoes stand in my back yard. Pogromni-the Black Destroying Death-oozes lava and snores like a sleeping giant. White Shishaldin, 9500 feet high, erupts every year to the accompaniment of earthquakes and tidal waves. Between times, bears-Kodiak brownies-off the slopes smash in our doors.
"My front yard is the Bering Sea, just where the Aleutian Chain starts swinging out 900 miles toward Asia. Sailors call that particular spot the Graveyard of the Pacific. In summer, it's the foggiest place in the world. At all times, it's the kettle where the weatherman brews those violent storms that sweep down the Pacific Coast. Today, the remains of eight wrecks are strewn along the beach in the immediate vicinity of my Cape Sarichef Light, and there are many more on the outlying islands. But, with all that, it's home to me; and there's a fascination about it which makes it my choice of all the stations in the north."
Twenty-seven-year-old Ted Pedersen, youngest head keeper in the Alaska Lighthouse Service, sat in his hotel suite in San Francisco, answering the question invariably put to a lighthouse keeper: "What do you do to break the monotony of your lonely life?"
He was on his "Year's leave with pay"-Uncle Sam's reward to those capable men who serve three years at difficult and isolated stations. He was spending his vacation taking a round-the-world cruise to see what other countries have to offer in the way of lighthouses. But obviously he was counting the months until he could return to his own unique post.
Nature's Three-Ring Circus
Here are some of the reasons why it is unique: It is the farthest western lighthouse on the two American continents-lying some 2100 miles farther west on the map than San Francisco.
From the northwest end of Unimak Island, it flashes its warning to ships through Unimak Pass, the dreaded gateway through the Aleutian fence of islands that stand like pickets between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
Between December and March, when no ships can enter the frozen Bering, its tower is dark-the only Alaska lighthouse so affected by winter. Yet, because of the proximity of the Japanese Current, the temperature there seldom, if ever, reaches zero.
Today, on Unimak, though nearly a dozen dead craters cup eternal snows, it is still the theater of the greatest Plutonic activity on the Aleutian chain. Its marshes steam. Many of its rivers run warm. Its central peaks split the velocity of gales into williwas-opposing gusts of wind that rush together on the farther side, meeting and blasting the storm clouds up into geysers of furious splendor. The surrounding sea also is an elemental battleground, where terrific winds blow counter to swift-running currents, creating tide rips that leap into thirty-foot combers.
"We three fellows at Sarichef are so accustomed to these things, we pay them little attention," the athletic young Pedersen continued in his deep, quiet voice. "Our big thrill is the arrival of the lighthouse tender with the supplies, once a year. A steamer with mail comes every month, but half the time storms make it impossible for the skipper to put off a small boat to land it on our beach. So he toots farewell and takes it back with him. One year we didn't get our December mail until the following May."
A Post in No Woman's Land
"Tough luck? Yes. But we have plenty of work that fills all our waking hours and keeps us from thinking about it. A lighthouse keeper, you know, is not supposed to think. But to hold his job he must be a good jack of all trades-engineer, electrician, plumber, carpenter, plasterer, painter, high climber, cable splicer, lifeguard, surf runner, wireless operator, barber, hunter for fresh meat. He must be a better-than-average bookkeeper, since he's required to make accurate accounting for goods in his charge, whose value totals high in the thousands of dollars. Ours is a bachelor station, so we also do our own washing, mending, and cooking. Sarichef was built in 1903 as a family post, with three large dwellings. Two have always stood empty. No woman could stand the life. At first, on account of the isolation and subterranean activities, it was almost impossible to get men to go out there.
"At a bachelor station, according to strict lighthouse regulations, no women are allowed to visit. They can't even land on the beach without a Governor's permit. "But," Pedersen laughed, "One morning a white woman did come ashore regardless.
"A steamer stopped below the light and lowered a boat. Through the glasses I saw a woman in the stern-the first one I'd laid eyes on in nearly three years! Boy! Did my heart go into a tailspin! I wouldn't take the glasses off her a second, for fear she'd turn out to be a mirage, or something. Wondering who she was and what tremendously important thing that had brought her, I sprinted down to the beach to welcome her. But when she stepped ashore, would you believe it, I was so excited I couldn't say a word? I stood there trembling, gazing at her like a moron. No, I couldn't tell how she looked or whether she was young and old. To me she was just-Woman! A miracle, a marvel, everything that is fine and dainty and beautiful in the world.
"She began talking to me, but the sound of her voice was so lovely I didn't hear the words. Whenever she'd stop, I'd nod. With her eyes on me, I would have nodded 'yes' to anything. She wrote something on a pad and, as she said good-by, thrust the paper into my hand. I tried to beg her to stay ten minutes-five minutes-one minute longer. I tried to ask if I might just touch her little hand. But I was still dumb as a clam.
"Rooted to the beach, I watched her being rowed back to the ship; watched the ship steam away. When the sea was empty and lonely once more, I looked at the paper she'd given me.
"It was a receipt. She was a magazine agent. I had subscribed for a dozen magazines for-well, I don't remember for how many years."
Pedersen is far from being unsophisticated. Son of Capt. C. T. Pedersen, daring ice pilot and one of the wealthiest traders and fur buyers in the Arctic, he was educated in private schools in New England. But as a result of vacations spent in the Arctic, he is a dead shot and can hold his own with any Eskimo when it comes to primitive whaling, walrusing and capturing polar bears. He wears a reindeer parka or a dinner jacket with equal ease. He is an enthusiastic and skillful dancer, as dexterous gliding over the waxed floors of a metropolis to the moan of saxophones, as he is when doing the Whale Dance in an igloo to the beat of native drums.
Before he was twenty-one, he had made seven trips into the polar seas as far as ships may go. Even to Wrangle Island and Banks Land, made famous by Stefansson. He had mate's papers before he could grow a mustache. Being of a social, as well as of an inquiring turn of mind, he had also thoroughly investigated all strata of society in seaports on both coasts of America.
He went on with his story:
"When I finished school, dad wanted me to follow his line of business, but my ambition is to write about wild animals rather than buy up their pelts. That's why I became a lightkeeper at Sarichef. I can study there without distractions-you should see my rooms lined with books!-And the island is a game preserve where bears, sea lions, caribou, foxes, all kinds of birds, live unhunted lives. In addition, it is an island of inspiring beauty, and in summer an Arcadian paradise."
Summer at Sarichef
"Grass five feet tall covers the uplands that roll toward the white volcanoes; and though there isn't a tree on the whole ninety-mile length of Unimak, rice, peas, celery and mushrooms big as saucers all grow wild. Strawberries, blueberries, cranberries and many other kinds are everywhere. Streams are so full of trout that I have caught them in my hands. Salmon come in such numbers that you can't see the water for the fish. It's a nesting ground for ducks, geese, eagles and sea birds. Ferns and seventy varieties of wild flowers give the lowlands all the colors of Chinese rugs. Even the lava beds are plush with tinted lichens, crimson, golds, lavender, peach. Then, though the local name for Mt. Shishaldin is 'Smokey Moses,' we are proud to know that it vies with Fujiyama for the reputation of being the world's most beautiful cone mountain.
"Uncle Sam allows us, at Sarichef, to shoot caribou-an animal like large reindeer. It's our only fresh meat. I do most of the hunting. Being husky and in perfect health, I don't mind packing the game home six or seven miles on my back.
"One afternoon I brought down a buck on a little hill. Before I could lower my rifle, I heard my shot answered by three others, spaced like the wilderness signal of distress. I fired again. From the north, about a mile away, it came a second time. Shot! Silence for five slow counts. Shot! Silence for ten counts. Shot! I swept the terrain with my glasses, and finally made out the figures of two men staggering along in the grass.
"When I reached them, I found they were from the schooner Gladiator, once owned by Stefansson. During the night before, their steering gear had broken; swift currents had carried them into the breakers, and the schooner was now piled up on a reef at the northwest end of Unimak, some eighteen miles from our station. The captain, being too sick to walk, had been left aboard the wreck, while these two men set out to find our light and send out an S.O.S. One insisted that Sarichef lay south; the other, east. They had been wandering first one way then the other, arguing their heads off, until now they were nearly all in.
"I helped them to the station and immediately radioed the Coast Guard cutter, Chelan, to pick up the sick captain on the wreck. Tides were so that the Gladiator crew figured she was fairly safe for a week. The cutter started at once, speeding through a heavy sea and rising storm. I connected the receiver to the loudspeaker so any call from her could be heard all over the station.
"At noon the next day it came; and what a tale of woe the operator had to tell. The Chelan reached the wreck that morning and, despite the danger from heavy seas, lowered a lifeboat manned by eleven of their best men. Just as the boat was nearing the Gladiator, three of those freak waves-baby tidal waves-that rise without reason on Bering Sea rolled in, swept wreck and lifeboat onto the beach, and smashed the lifeboat. Wind and sea had increased until it was now impossible to lower another boat to attempt a rescue. The Chelan, at great risk, was standing by just outside the breakers. Combers were washing clear over the wreck. The eleven sailors had managed to escape in good shape, and had rescued the sick captain, according to information wigwagged to the cutter. But all twelve men were now stranded on the beach, exposed to the howling September gale.
"I radioed the location of a trapper's empty cabin in the vicinity, and the Chelan wigwagged it to the fellows on the beach. They found shelter, and for three days were all packed inside the single room, stormbound. No means of making a fire and nothing to eat. But they did derive a little cheer from cocktails they made with rain water and alcohol from the Gladiator's three compasses.
"The fourth day when the storm abated to half a gale, those chaps started to walk the eighteen miles to our light, taking turns carrying the sick man on an improvised stretcher. Believe me, each one of them deserves a medal for the way they brought him through. All were wearing heavy rubber hip boots, which chafed their feet so they had to discard them before they had travelled ten miles over the lava beds. The wind pelted their faces with lava sand, which is so hard and sharp that it wears away glass. They arrived at our place barefooted, their faces and soles of their feet all cut from lava. Their clothes were ragged and of course soaking wet, and their stomachs were empty. But do you think they were grouching? No, not even the sick man. They were all joking about the way the old Bering had put one over on them. This is typical of the way Uncle Sam's Coast Guard men do their dangerous jobs.
"We had waiting a boiler of our best caribou mulligan, another of coffee, and a flock of fresh bread. They stowed it all away under their belts, and then we put them to bed. They slept for twenty-four hours.
"The ensuing week was filled with the dirtiest weather I've ever seen, but for once I was glad of it. The Chelan couldn't get near Sarichef, and we fellows at the light had the time of our lives with our jolly bunch of shipwrecks, singing, dancing, talking. Boy, it was good to talk to new fellows; to listen to new stories, and to tell our own to a new audience! It would have been perfect if the captain hadn't been sick.
"On the ninth day the Chelan managed to wallow in under the light through a sea running mountain high-a feat of seamanship which only an Arctic sailor can appreciate. But her lifeboats, though admirably adapted to the purpose in any kind of open water, were not designed to run the devilishly combing, toppling surf that piles in on Sarichef beach. Our sick man, however, had to be taken to a doctor as soon as possible. So I got out my little dory, watched my chance to sneak it through the breakers, and rowed him out to the cutter. I took the other fellows out, too, making fourteen round trips because the sea was so nasty I dared the risk only one man at a time. When they were all gone-Gee! It was like a graveyard around our place.
"Yes, I can talk to ships at sea by means of radio, but our particular air lane is so busy commercially, we don't like to hog the air for social chats. Besides, there's little pleasure in it on account of Japanese ships, thicker then gulls up there. Except during enforced silent periods, Nippon never does get off the air. They still use the open-gap spark sets, which make a dickens of a racket, creating so much interference that even our ordinary radio reception of musical programs comes in punctured by Jap conversations. When talking among themselves, the Japanese use their Kati-Kani code, formulated by them before the International Code was created and agreed upon by all nations. No one else understands it, so we don't even have the satisfaction of knowing what they are saying. It is only when speaking to ships of other nations that they use the International.
"At a set time during each hour of the twenty-four there is a three minute silent period, when all commercial sending ceases and all operators listen for signals from ships in distress. One January night as I sat with the 'cans' on my ears, I heard: 'Japanese freighter Koshun Maru, ashore at Scotch Cap.'"
Cast Up By the Sea
"Scotch Cap, only twenty-two miles from Sarichef, is the most important light station on the Aleutians, marking the southern entrance of Unimak Pass. The weather was calm and I lost no time getting down there. The Jap had literally climbed up on the beach almost under the lighthouse and was sitting on an even keel in a smooth sea, as if anchored a few yards from shore. She had run aground in a quiet but heavy snowstorm, with the Scotch Cap siren blowing in her ear, which will give you some idea how thick the weather gets in our section. Another Japanese ship came right away and took off the crew.
"No sooner had they gone than a terrific storm hit the coast, and within two days that big vessel was broken into sections and scattered all along the beach. I salvaged the captain's uniform and natty straw hat, which I wore for a year afterward.
"Shipwrecks always furnish a little excitement, of course, but to my mind, the most interesting things at Sarichef are the wild animals. Red foxes, ordinarily the wariest of man-fearing creatures, play about our kitchen door all summer. Unless we keep the warehouse locked, they go in and help themselves to our crated eggs.
"There's something peculiarly fascinating about a wild fox-his round appraising amber eyes, his lithe, resilient body that can vanish while you look at him. In summer, though, he has none of the silky beauty which makes his skin an ornament for a woman's shoulders. He looks like a dead cat resurrected from the garbage dump-a moth-eaten little devil with gobs of dirty matted hair clinging to him. He doesn't fur out good until December. But smart! On the very day trapping season opens, he bids us farewell and doesn't show up again until the season closes in February.
"Lighthouse regulations do not permit our keeping a dog, on account of the barking. We fellows work in three shifts, and one of us is always sleeping. But we can have a cat. When we imported our two mousers, Whitey and Nigger-eye, we were so worried about what the foxes might do to them, we made all sorts of holes for them to dart into when they were chased. But it was the foxes who needed the safety zones! From the moment of their landing, our swashbuckling felines had the wild creatures on the run. Familiarity has bred a halfway friendliness. Our cats condescend to play with the foxes, but it's an armed truce, with Whitey and Nigger-eye ready to go into battle at the swish of a tail.
"I've named many of the foxes who come back year after year. Petite and Pewee always have their families in our back yard. They know I'll protect them from the voracious eagles who carry off fox puppies. When I whistle, they come running and eat from my hand. I taught them by first placing food on the end of a long pole until I dispensed with it. Pewee always brings me her puppies, depositing them at my feet, and then snuggling against me, looking up as if to say: 'See! Aren't they wonderful?' It makes a fellow feel good to have a little wild thing trust him like that.
"A few trappers have permits to run lines on Unimak in winter. Once I came on Pewee caught in a trap. When I rushed up to release her, she gave me a look that cut me to the heart, it was so hurt and reproachful. It said: "How could you, my friend, do this cruel thing to me?' Gosh, you should have heard me trying to tell her I hadn't a thing to do with it. She must have understood, because when I freed her foot, she limped quickly away, but turned to look back. It was a long, considering look. Then, very slowly, she came toward me and placed her poor, mangled little paw in my hand. I gathered her up in my arms and sat there in the snow, trying to keep from crying. She got well, though, and I bet she knows me when I get back home.
"To see a fox living up to his name for cunning, you should watch him in summer on the bluffs where sea birds nest. Like a red shadow, he sneaks along the most inaccessible cliffs, hunting young birds and eggs. This takes nerve, for he is surrounded by hundreds of screaming enraged birds, who swoop down at him, trying to knock him off the rocks. One false move and he'd fall into the sea hundreds of feet below. When he finds an egg that suits him, he takes it delicately in his mouth, withdraws from the edge of the precipice, and very leisurely sucks it from the shell."
A Fox Who Plays Possum
"Large birds, he catches by playing possum. Stretching himself out on his back in the grass, he lies as if dead. Then very slowly he elevates his tail and it moves very gently. Wild sea birds are curious. They'll circle above him, coming lower and lower to investigate the odd thing in the grass. Suddenly, like a released coiled spring, Mr. Fox leaps up and snaps his jaws on some unlucky little beggar that has flown too close.
"The only beast that is a menace to us at Sarichef is the brown bear. He's the largest carnivorous animal in the world today; weighs anywhere from 1500 to 1800 pounds. His saber-toothed jaws can clamp themselves over the chest of a robust man. One blow of his powerful paw can break the back of a caribou or a 1600-pound sea lion.
"He's the gamest thing on four legs too. I've seen a brownie with eight shots in him still coming for his slayer, roaring like a volcano, hair standing straight up, blood and foam blowing from gnashing jaws. Not a pretty sight for the sportsman on the other end of the gun. But the Alaskan law makes it necessary for each tourist sportsman to hunt with a guide, so they are pretty safe.
"Some visiting hunters, however, don't appreciate their danger. Once, on another island, I stood beside a guide who had led this man to the kill, and watched the sportsman pump lead at the approaching bear. His aim wasn't so hot. The bear kept coming. When it was within eight feet, to save the hunter from sure disaster, the guide put a bullet in the beast's 'life.' As it dropped dead almost at the sportsman's feet, he turned to the guide in a rage. 'Fellow!' he shouted. 'Your action borders on the impertinent! Didn't you see I had already wounded the animal badly in the hind foot?'
"At that, the brownie is a playful sort of cuss-playful like a young tornado. It's just good clean fun when he visits a trapper's cabin in the owner's absence, tears off the low roof, tears down the door and scatters the contents of the cabin all over the surrounding country. Trappers make a protection of planks studded with huge spikes sticking out-like the inside of the Iron Maiden. They place them on their roofs and doors and windows, but even these do little good. If a brownie wants to get in, he bashes in a wall.
Bear Hunting by Camera
"I can't help liking a brownie, though. At a distance. There's a deceptive look of alcoholic benevolence about him as he comes along, unbelievably huge, majestically ponderous, rolling like a sailor with six shots of rum under his belt. Then all at once he'll stop and, with the comic concentration of a terrier, make the dirt fly, tearing down the side of a hill to get at a ground squirrel. If a skyscraper should start building alongside him, he'd never deign to give it a look, because he knows his work is so much more important. He's the lord of the animal world in Alaska, and he knows it.
"My greatest sport on Unimak is stalking brownies with my moving picture camera. There are regular bear colonies living now in the ruins of ancient Aleut villages that mark many of the promontories above the sea. Aleuts? They were the original inhabitants of the island, which was once the most populous of the Aleutians. In the middle of the 1700's, invading Russian sea-otter hunters slaughtered the natives, literally by the hundreds. Those that escaped, moved to the other islands, claiming that their dead haunted the blood-drenched villages. That superstition has lived through nearly two centuries, keeping all Aleuts away.
"I'll never forget the first ruin I saw- a row of barbaras, half-underground huts, standing roofless in the sun. The uprights were stark, white rib bones of whales. Like supplicating arms, they reached up from the crumbling dirt walls, now overgrown with grass and flowers. Moving familiarly in and out of the blossoming ruins were nine brown bears.
"Once, on my Sunday off, I came on bear tracks so large that I had to measure them in order to believe my eyes. Sixteen inches from heel to claw! And the width of the trail, from the outside of one front paw to the outside of the other, was thirty-seven inches. One foot toed in, which often happens when a bear attains tremendous weight. I named the monster Pigeon-toe right there, and determined to get a picture of him.
"But after tracking him for hours without sighting him, I gave up for the day, and started home by another route. Finally, I came on the remains of eight caribou in front of a lava cave at the foot of Mt. Pogromni. Two foxes were feeding on the carcass of one, freshly killed. The atmosphere around there was concentrated essence of bear.
"I was creeping up to get a pictures of the foxes when out of the mouth of the cave came-the king of Alaska brownies. Huge, shaggy, with a grizzled, low-swinging head. Pigeon-toe! He must have been more than twelve feet long. I ducked behind a lava bomb and, trembling with excitement, watched him.
"He shambled ponderously to his fresh kill, chased the foxes away, came back, and tore a shoulder from the carcass as easily as if it had been made of papier-mache. Sitting on his haunches with the hunk of meat dripping between his paws, he began to eat-a gory spectacle, believe me! But he kept cocking an eye toward the foxes, who sat at a safe distance, yearning and licking their chops. They made several attempts to sneak up behind him to snatch a bite from the prone carcass, but each time, quick as a flash, he'd drop his lunch, whirl and run them off; returning to pick up his bone.
"When it was clean, he flung it down and stretched himself alongside the remains of the caribou, lolling like a drunken Roman noble at the banquet table, as he leisurely ripped off mouthfuls of meat. When he was full, he got to his feet and with ursine dignity strolled off up the flank of the volcano. I followed at a discreet distance, until he flopped at the foot of a snow bank.
"He had no sooner settled himself to snooze and digest his lunch, then a she-bear appeared, eyed him and, approaching coyly, gave him a tap of her paw that would have felled a man. He ignored her attentions at first, but she persisted in her beguilements, until, at the end of half an hour, those two huge creatures were tumbling and playing like a pair of kittens. They varied their Gargantuan gambols by crawling up the snow bank and sliding down again on the seat of their pants. It was the most comical sight I ever saw, but at the same time it gave me an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling to watch them."
Central Heating for Bruin
"Some days later, while out after meat, I came on the fresh trail of a single caribou, which eventually led me past the end of a small valley we call Tent City. It is filled with half a hundred lava cones shaped like tepees, forty and fifty feet high. Some are still warm, which makes the place a favorite haunt for bears. "As I passed, my attention was drawn to the outermost cone. It was lower than the others and flat on top. To my astonishment, lying up there on this lookout was old Pigeon-toe, watching for game.
"It was evident that he had already spotted my quarry, for when the caribou reached a point upwind, he shambled down and began to stalk the animal on his own account.
"In the rough country outside the valley, the caribou was frequently out of my sight; but I followed the bear, confident that his nose was leading him unerringly to the meat we each desired. For three hours he slipped along the underside of ridges and made short cuts through gulches, stalking his prey with a deadly patience that sent chills down my spine.
"At last, both hunter and hunted passed from view over the top of a grassy knoll. I was following with all speed when I heard the rumbling, coughing death roar of the bear. My first glance from the summit showed me that Pigeon-toe had already made his kill. Some yards below me, his huge form loomed above the grass as he stood nosing the fallen caribou.
"I shot into the air until I drove him off, then ran down to the slain beast. Its spine had been shattered by a single blow that left bloody claw marks at the juncture of the head and body.
"Pigeon-toe's cave? Yes, I went into it one day when the old boy was off hunting. It's low and dark and about ninety feet in circumference. In the center, hollowed out of the lava sand, is his nest. On a lava shelf I found some strange little wooden images, and in one corner a wide hole that led down into a deeper chamber below. When I go back to the light I'm going to have one of my associates let me down on a rope to explore it. It may be one of the ancient burial caves in which the Aleuts used to place the mummies of their dead.
The Pigeon-Toe Family
"I've seen Mrs. Pigeon-toe many times since that first day when I saw her courting her spouse. She has a distinctive light spot on her brown back which makes it easy to recognize her. She had two cubs. When cubs are born during the period of hibernation, they are no longer than newborn kittens. When the mother revives and brings them out in the spring, they are usually two or three months old. By July, when the salmon run, they have attained the size of chow dogs. Ordinarily, cubs sit on the river bank while their mothers wade into the stream and, with her paw, bats salmon out to them. But the Pigeon-toe progeny were remarkably lively little beggars. I've seen them wade into the shallow stream where mamma was fishing, and play about her, scaring the fish away until she, exasperated, would box their ears and send them yipping to the shore.
"At Sarichef we are continually annoyed by bears who come down at night and trample our garden. One fellow got in the habit of smashing in our meat-house door and walking off with half a caribou. At the time I was in the midst of canning 200 quarts of meat that I always put up for the winter, and it began to get my goat when this happened five nights in succession. More serious than the loss of the meat, however, was the fact that twice, coming off watch in the dark, I had nearly run into this bird prowling around the back door.
"Now, despite what the tourist sportsmen have written about the harmless nature of the Alaskan brown bear, we of the North know that he is always just some 1700 pounds of chained lightning and potential death. He may run from you, yes. But, again, he may let out a roar and swarm all over you. The point is, you never are sure which course he'll take. We fellows at the light were getting the jitters, fearing we'd barge into this baby in the dark and get killed or maimed. And we were hundreds of miles from a doctor.
"I finally took the law into my own hands. One calm night when the moon was shining, I sat at the kitchen window, rifle in hand. Presently, I saw him moving along the whitewashed fence across the garden. He stopped once and raised up on his hind legs, swinging his great head and sniffing. Boy! He looked as tall as a rearing horse. Then he shambled over and stopped right under my window. I could have poked him with my gun. But I didn't shoot. Darn him, it seemed too much like slaughter when I had the drop on him that way. The other two fellows gave me the laugh for being so soft.
"The next night was one of pitch darkness, with rain and a gale of wind. I came off watch at midnight, and could scarcely keep my feet on the ledge-like trail that leads down from the light to the dwelling. My lantern blew out and I couldn't hear anything but the crash of breakers on the rocks. I groped about, unable to see a foot ahead of me, until I found the back stoop. I was feeling my way up the wide concrete steps when all at once there was a terrific roar from the top. Instinctively I leaped. Something like an army truck bolted from above, just missing me. I picked myself up from the bottom of the steps where I had fallen, and ran for the front door. When I was inside, I felt for broken bones. None. But what that concrete did to my face!
"I was so mad, I got my rifle, posted my assistant at the kitchen window, with his finger on the light switch, and went out in the driving rain to lay for that bear by the meat-house door. Presently, I heard him sniffing close by. I signaled my assistant. He switched on the light. The bear charged me, reared up for the attack, and I shot him in the chest.
“In due time, of course, the game commissioner got after me, but when I explained, he admitted there were extenuating circumstances “The caribou has the toughest break of any creature on the island. He has all the trouble of shedding his great horns in the fall and growing them in the spring. In summer, when he has plenty to eat, he is easy prey for bear. In winter, when his enemy sleeps in a cozy den, the caribou is up against storms, cold, starvation. For weeks at a time, the snow freezes a crust so hard that be can't break it with his hooves to get at the grass beneath. Instinct tells him, two days ahead, from what direction a blizzard is coming, so he can move to some sheltered part of the island; but often be is so starved be hasn’t the strength to walk. Caribou bunch together for warmth and protection in winter. Last year an entire herd sought shelter from a storm in back of our dwellings. For a week they stood there, backs to the driving snow, gaunt, starving, patient. Many were so weak they lay in the drifts. When the blizzard ended, we found twenty-seven lying dead in the vicinity of the light. The worst of such a situation is that we can do nothing to help the poor beasts.”
Wings Over the Lighthouse
"One of the most poignant experiences I ever had, however, happened on a still black September night during my shift in the watch room. I looked out the window to see if our beam was piercing the darkness as it should, and noticed a queer flickering of the light. I stepped outside to find the air literally a live with thousands of tiny birds, evidently off their course on their migration south. The next instant I was in the midst of a deluge of birds that dashed blindly against our plate-glass light cage and the lighted lower windows of the watch room. Hundreds of dead and wounded were falling about me. Our cats and some of the boldest wild foxes were already there, engaged in an orgy of blood and destruction. But, ignoring the still warm dead, they leaped up the windows and struck down the fluttering living, their eyes gleaming in the dark with a luminescence that was at once terrible and beautiful- and unforgettable.
"I flung up the windows and opened the door, offering sanctuary for the wee feathered things – wrens, wild canaries, chickadees, Greenland song sparrows. Hundreds flew in, but many of the frightened little things beat their lives out against walls and ceiling. Others settled on anything they could find, glazed eyes staring, tiny wings trailing with exhaustion. Two lit on m y shoulder and immediately went to sleep, head-under-wing. A Greenland song spar row made a landing on my head, and with the carnage still going on outside, burst into a full-throated rollicking song.
"I don't know why this incident should have been so disturbing, but when I went off watch in the gray dawn, climbed to the top of Graveyard Hill above the light, and stood there a long time, wondering. Those poor, tired little birds, lured off their course by the gleam of our light, whose purpose I to guard and guide; throwing the last of their strength into a dash toward its promise, only to beat themselves to death against the goal they had attained."
The Infinite Riddle
"No answer to that, except that they didn't understand the light. But somehow, for the first time in my life, the why of Death entered my mind making everything in my familiar world seem strange. I myself was the strangest and most unexplainable thing of all-a man standing there looking across the dawn-dim lava beds toward Pogromni, the Black Destroying Death. I could bear its faint deep rumble, and suddenly it was like the funeral roll of muffled drums. I heard the thin weird barking of foxes inland, waking to kill; the sighing of surf on the reefs where so many men have died. Shisbaldin vague in the gray light, was spouting fire; molten lava, like blood, flowing red down its side.
"At my feet was the grave of Rosenberg, the keeper who had died at Sarichef in 1918, because a storm came up the day the cutter arrived to take rum to the hospital. The small boat sent ashore for him swamped below the light, drowning the nine men bound on their errand of mercy. I even remembered the keeper whom I bad succeeded at Sarichef – dead now, also. But worse than dead when he was taken from the light, a cowering, hiding thing, gibbering about ghosts-the ghosts of the Aleuts who had been slain by the Russian bunters more than a century and a half ago.
"All this mixed up in my mind, emerging in a gigantic 'Why?' that seemed to fill the world. A lighthouse keeper's thoughts.
"Suddenly, I turned and ran as fast as I could down the hill to the dwelling. I switched on my shortwave radio and got-Paris! The gayest, maddest music of a Paris night. And I kept my mind on it while I threw a good hot breakfast into me.
"I'd remembered, you see, that a lighthouse keeper isn't supposed to think."
This story appeared in the
March 1999 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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