A place of rituals

Rituals have always had a place at Seguin. In her memoir The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife, Connie Scovill Small, the (you guessed it) wife of Seguin Lighthouse keeper Elson Small (1926-1930), describes life on this remote island as “a life of order and duty”. She fondly describes the ritual of ironing the cover for the expensive and fragile Frensel lens and the joy she found in being such an integral part of the lighting of the lamps every evening and extinguishing them every morning at dawn.

Now, the light is automated, so rituals are found elsewhere.

Today, we had a group of four visitors whose family had been in the area for seven generations. The two adult children in the group had been coming to Seguin nearly every year since they were very young. It was clear from the moment they crested the hill that they were so happy to be back and enjoying this family ritual of climbing the tower and exploring the trails once again.

After almost two weeks on the island, we’ve started our own rituals. We prepare our coffee the night before so we can wake up with the sunrise and have our coffee ready. We sip it as we take Tulah and Zorro outside for the first time for the day while we raise the flag. Later, we add water to the large cistern in the basement through a coordinated series of steps that pump water up from the well. We turn on the hot water heater in the mornings and shut it off just before we shower to conserve power overnight. We play cribbage over dinner and end each day reading and drinking hot chocolate.

While our rituals differ quite drastically from those of the lighthouse keepers who were stationed here prior to the automation of the light, they have allowed us to fall into our own patterns and rhythms that shape our days here on Seguin.

Daily Weather Report
Temperature: 66.7/53.2
Sunny skies
Wind W 9.2mph