Greeting the Coast

Self-sufficiency was a key, many said. One keeper at the Boon Island station observed, “I thought all one had to know how to do here was to clean, paint, and polish brass, but I have found out that one has to be a doctor, painter, steeplejack, glazier, boatman, gasoline engineer, electrician, stonecutter and even a cook.”

Connie Small describes it as a life of “order and duty,” full of small satisfactions despite the hardships. She recalls her pleasure, for example, in the evening ritual of turning on the lights. On Seguin Island where she lived for a while, she had a panoramic view of a large number of the lighthouses along the Maine coast. She writes: “I loved being in the tower at sunset. When I took the lens cover off and the light flashed, I could begin counting from Portland to Pemaquid as almost simultaneously the lights came on—thirteen of them. It was like saying ‘hello,’ ‘hello,’ ‘hello,’ all up and down the coast.”

Tour the coast and see Connie Small’s Maine first hand.