The Lighthouse Keeper | Khaffeine, an audio journey by Khan Academy
[Music] You wake to the sound of crashing waves swelling and breaking against the breakwaters outside your home. They have a rhythm to them, a rhythm you've grown accustomed to like a heartbeat. They build, swell and crash, build, swell and crash again and again, splashing at the foundations of your home. This is normal, of course; after all, you're a lighthouse keeper.
The sun has not yet risen, and it's cold in every part of the lighthouse except your quarters. Your day begins as you throw on your heaviest sweater, your knit cap, and the gloves your aunt knit for you this spring. This is how every day starts for you: trudging up the stairs in the dim pre-dawn light. You make your way to the observation room and its grand wide windows to take weather readings from the equipment. Your hands trace the old pitted iron railings as you make your way up the tight spiral staircase in the center of the lighthouse tower.
You're starting to memorize the way the railings feel. You can tell how far up you are based on the pits and metal because you do this every day, every day the same. You could do this with your eyes closed. Why do you do it? Wake up in darkness, type on an old laptop with cold numbed fingers, tell the weather office that the horizon is clear or that there's good visibility or that there's heavy fog, rapidly decreasing barometric pressure—a big storm, actually. Wow, that's a huge storm.
If you're being honest, you snap out of your reverie as the sun crests over the horizon and new readings come in: red sky morning, sailor take warning. It's your job to keep the bright shining lamp atop the lighthouse tower lit to let the ships at sea know where the ocean ends and the sharp rocks and reefs of the coast begin. It's most important when the visibility is bad, and right now a fog is rolling in. In an hour's time, it'll be thickest pea soup out there. They won't be able to see a thing except for the bright beacon of the lighthouse itself that cuts through the fog like nothing else can.
That's why you do it. People are counting on you to keep that land lit, and you know what? You've got this. It's checklist time in the supply room. You check up on your supplies; you've got plenty of batteries for your flashlight, spare fuses for the fuse box, and crucially, lots of snacks. You hurry down to the basement where your diesel generator is; it's humming away, the fuel tank is full, you just checked. This is your ritual; you do this every 12 hours, every single day. It's boring, but there's also a kind of comfort in it—a comfort in the consistency of a simple job done well.
The generator keeps the light on at the top of the lighthouse, and it also powers the heater in your bedroom, so there's that too. You made yourself some breakfast and a mug of hot cocoa, the kind from a packet with raspberry flavoring, and you sit in your favorite chair in the observation room just watching the storm build. Big gray clouds, fat and heavy with rain, swell in the sky. The wind picks up, white caps start blossoming on the crests of waves, and those clouds start moving in faster and faster, blotting out the already dim sunlight.
You start to see those sideways lightning strikes that grasp between clouds—anvil crawlers, they call them—the sign of a really big storm. It begins to rain, and you can just make out the rumble of the approaching storm. You radio with some of the bigger container ships within distance and urge them to get to port as soon as possible because the radar is telling you that the really nasty weather is coming and fast.
The wind picks up, and as the rain begins to batter the lighthouse, it starts to get harder and harder to hear what people are saying over the radio. Back on the observation deck, the sea swells are getting bigger, the winds whipping them up into these big gray-blue mountains, and now they're starting to beat against the upper windows of the lighthouse. So we're talking at least 80 feet here—huge geysers of sea spray foaming up and splashing against the walls.
When you send your weather report into central, the satellite connection drops out in the rain, and you have to switch to the low-frequency radio transmission. The rain on the windows sounds like hammer blows. The waves and the thunder are coming so fast and so loud now that you have difficulty telling them apart. A prodigious bolt of lightning splits the sky and shows you the armada of clouds on approach for just a second.
It's time to check on the lamp. It's an extremely bright light refracted through this delicate, enormous, multi-faceted lens that vastly increases its output, making it visible for many miles at sea. The motor's going underneath the lamp, and it's rotating the whole thing very slowly, sending a searchlight beam out into the gloomy dark. Modern lighthouses use LEDs, but this definitely isn't a modern lighthouse. Plus, you've grown accustomed to the rhythmic groaning of the motor. It almost hurts to look at it; that's how bright it is, but you're glad it's there as the waves beat against the walls, as a beacon in the darkening fog.
Winter brings the night on quickly, and it's growing dark. It's a good thing the light is on; at least you're not out in one of those ships on the water. The light suddenly goes out, and you are plunged into darkness. It was so bright in the lamp room, in fact, that you feel completely blind. The lamp didn't burn out; the power is gone. The motor that rotated the lamp has stopped moving. All you can hear now is the terrible storm and the waves.
You've got to see if the generator gave out. You grab for your sturdy flashlight, but a lightning bolt strikes the lighthouse at the same moment. You're safe; it must have caught the lightning rod. You notice that even the roar of the storm sounds muffled and distant due to the ringing in your ears, and it takes you a beat to realize you've dropped the flashlight down the stairs, which you will now have to traverse in total darkness.
The wind howls, the waves batter the lighthouse, and yet a feeling of confidence washes over you. As soon as your hand touches that pitted, cold iron railing, you know this building backwards and forwards. You know every inch of the stairwell based on the feel of the railing alone. You make this climb many times each day, when the sun blazes and when it's completely dark. Every day the same; you could do this with your eyes closed.
Halfway down the stairs, you stop off in the supply room and root around in the darkness until you find one of everything: a fuse for the fuse box, extra batteries for the flashlight just in case, and for you, a bar of chocolate because you'll need it. Every item was exactly in the place you knew it'd be. On the landing just outside the supply room, you find the flashlight—dented, sure, but it still works. Now that you can see again, you run down to the generator to find that it's still running, but all the lights are out.
A fuse must have broken. You hit the emergency stop on the generator, turn off the switch that connects it to the lighthouse's power system, knock open the fuse box, and there it is—a blackened, busted fuse. You don't know how it happened, but you've got a fresh fuse in there and replace it before you even have time to think about it. You close the fuse box, turn the generator back on, and pull that switch; the lights are on again.
Up the stairs, let's go. The lights along the stairwell light your path, and by the time you make it up to the lamp, you know what you'll see before you even get there: a beacon in the darkness sweeping out into that rain-streaked indigo night. You did it; you were prepared for this moment, and you met him because you were consistent and careful. That bar of chocolate tastes better than anything you've eaten in years because more than anything, you earned it.
Your radio crackles to life, and the grateful captain of a container ship thanks you for keeping the light on. She can see it now, and she and her navigator are using it to plot a course to shore. Remember this moment and remember this feeling. [Music] You are a lantern in the inky black, a light for others to see by. You can do this because you have done this, and you'll keep going.