Down East Books, 2007
“It was simply our home”
Pictures of Maine lighthouses are so common that you could be forgiven for seeking something with more grit.
But if you’re thinking that when you’ve seen one lighthouse, you’ve seen them all, you’re in for a treat. My advice: curl up by the woodstove with Tom and Lee Ann Szelog’s personal and original memoir of living with the elements amid exquisite natural beauty at Port Clyde’s Marshall Point Light.
This is a mainland lighthouse, but it still has a remote feel, a sense that it’s part of the old mariner’s network that includes outermost Matinicus Rock Light, also in the book, and other lighthouses that stand through fog and wind and darkness and light and even hurricanes — guides with an uncanny power over us that stretches way beyond their practical value as aids to navigation.
The Szelogs know this and communicate it.
At Marshall Point, Lee Ann could commute to her job as a vice president at Camden National Bank. Tom could devote himself to full-time photography, and he is indeed a professional artist.
Neither Tom, 49, nor Lee Ann, 47, consider themselves professional writers. The text here consists of excerpts from a daily journal. It’s not slick or contrived but more like friends talking with you at the post office. Here’s a sample from Tom: “From the parlor windows, I watched in utter disbelief as a huge shape emerged from the ocean near Gunning Rocks Ledge, three-quarters of a mile offshore. A whale’s arched back surfaced, its massive hulk surging out of the water. The behemoth — a 45-55 foot humpback whale — surfaced several times, exhaling a tall stream of moisture-condensed breath.”
In this book you can see a guillemot close-up, carrying an eel for its young. You can see a blizzard, and the family of Maine State Trooper Drew Griffith (also a poet) scattering his ashes. Tom not only photographed an adorable baby seal. The Szelogs called the New England Aquarium and put stranded, underweight “Clyde” on a plane for Boston.
Here you will see Tom’s awesome photographs of familiar subject matter such as Rockland windjammers gliding past the point. But you will see the sea and sky in a fresh light — pardon the pun. You will feel the sharp ledge, hear the crash of rough surf, and dream under the spell of a gentle full moonrise.
You will also see people such as neighbors old and young, and folks from the endless procession of visitors. From weddings to the scattering of a spouse’s ashes, the Szelogs bore quiet witness to poignant, celebratory and sometimes heartbreaking moments in other people’s lives.
Quick on the shutter, Tom took pictures of nearly all of it, respecting people’s privacy but communicating the intensity of an experience, an event. You might think there would be an off-season. There is, but visitors kept on coming in all seasons and sorts of weather, and Lee Ann and Tom appreciated their motives and their presence.
Once they saw a nude modeling on the point. That’s not in the book.
Having people around was simply part of the deal, and the Szelogs said people were there to enjoy themselves, whether gazing out to sea or the couple playing violin and guitar on the rocks.
The Szelogs were the first tenants of the St. George Historical Society, which acquired Marshall Point Light from the U.S. Coast Guard. The couple lived upstairs; the society operates a seasonal museum they downstairs that is well worth a visit.
Tom and Lee Ann were more than observers. After moving in, in September 1989, they became informal light keepers for the Coast Guard, which maintains an automated light and foghorn at Marshall Point. “Automated” doesn’t mean it always worked, and the Szelogs sometimes came to the rescue, saving a trip for a crew from Southwest Harbor.
The couple helped other volunteers get the local museum started, and held their breath when St. George residents voted to accept the lighthouse property at town meeting in March 1998. There is a strong, classic photo of the voters.
A lot of Tom’s photos are classics. Some are just plain beautiful, satisfying because they remind us of our magnificent coast. Others evoke different emotions, such as a ketch that fetched up on a ledge, nearly crushing a bystander who tried to push the vessel off. He scrambled to safety just in time.
Not so lucky were four workers on nearby Hupper Island whose boat overturned at the end of the day. Two swam back to the island, two drowned. Tom took a dramatic time exposure showing the flight pattern of a nighttime search helicopter. Lee Ann wept for the lost men.
Tom wept when a neighbor died in 1992. She was Marion Dalrymple, daughter of an earlier Marshall Point keeper. She had lived in the keeper’s house from 1895 to 1919 and still lived nearby.
The light itself dates to 1832, although the current light tower was built in 1858, and the house was erected in the 1890s after lightning destroyed the original home.
The Szelogs left Marshall Point at the close of 2002, and now live with their two dogs in a log cabin they built in rural Whitefield. They are completing another book, documenting a year of life in the woods.
In the book, the couple refers to their lives as a fairy tale, from falling in love through shared affection for lighthouses, to living at Marshall Point. Lee Ann said they feel blessed to now be living another dream.
She acknowledged, in her final written entry, that she would miss the lighthouse “for one simple reason, which I learned years ago from our neighbor Marion Dalrymple, the daughter of the longest-tenured light keeper at Marshall Point. Asked by a television reporter what it is like to live in a lighthouse, she replied, `It was simply our home.’ And that is why I will miss Marshall Point — it was simply our home for almost 14 glorious years.”