Telling the Story

It is Tuesday morning and we are sitting in the Laundromat doing a load of clothes.  It would have ben nice to have WiFi here but it didn’t happen so I will send this later.  This is our last day off for three days, but I’m not complaining.  The schedule here is very easy to handle and the work load is very easy.  Our interpretive skills are barely tested here.  There are three different positions at the lighthouse the first spot is for telling how the area is laid out and what life was like here on this windy and lonely place.  Then we send the visitors to the building attached to the tower.  In what is called the work room and the oil room where the work shift duties are explained.  Following that the visitors are invited to climb the 64 circular stairs to the lantern room where the Fresnel lens and the light are explained.  This is the only lighthouse in Oregon and one of the few elsewhere that allows visitors to be in close proximity to the Fresnel lens.  The lens is worth the trip to the top alone.  The view is just a bonus.

     The time allotment of each station is supposed to be 3-5 minutes.   There is so much to show and tell about that it is difficult to limit yourself as a docent.  As the summer progresses and the crowds increase, it will be more necessary, but now that the numbers are still low we are telling a longer version of the story for our visitors.