Location Taken: Frankfort, Michigan
Time Taken: May 2011
For many years, there was a poster hanging in the hallway by the stairs in my house. It showed the location of many of the lighthouses, or perhaps even all the lighthouses, lining the shores of the Great Lakes surrounding Michigan.
And every single time I contemplated the poster, I first looked at the small picture of this lighthouse.
It’s not too far from where my Grandparents live, so I would visit the town with this lighthouse fairly frequently. There’s one main road through the downtown of Frankfort, and at the end of whatever errand we were there for, we’d pretty much always go all the way to the end of that road, right to the parking lot at the beach. We’d pause briefly, look at the lighthouse and the sand and the many natures of the lake itself, and then turn around in the convenient loop in the lot and head home.
I’ve only walked out to that pier perhaps once at most. It’s a working lighthouse, not a tourist one, after all, and it’s fully automated. It was built long ago, and has guided ferries and freighters and yachts, telling them that this is a safe harbor from the storms that cross these lands. These days, the ferry no longer runs, and the town is just a small tourist town. But many ships still use the harbor, from pleasure craft for people just enjoying a ride on the waves to the fishing ships that supply the local smokehouses.
When a storm hits, the waves dance high above the pier, crashing and roaring as their path to the shore is interrupted. Other times thick fog covers the land. During the winter, most of the water is frozen along the shore, and the crashing waves leave a thick coating of ice on the pier. But most of the time, the sea is calm, and the sun is shining, and the lighthouse just merrily does its job.
