This is the Back Light. Also my brother and his dog Laker, meaning this pic was taken a looooong time ago because my bro’ died in 2005 and Laker years before that.

Yes, this dilapidated lighthouse is in the middle of the woods. It is not the kind of lighthouse that alerts ships to rocky peninsulas or islands or whatever. It is a “range light”. Range lights come in pairs, one behind the other, which means the “back” light of the pair may be in the woods depending on the terrain. Range lights show boats traversing the shipping channels when to turn. When the back and front lights are lined up, it’s time to turn. Nowadays all kinds of sophisticated navigational systems exist but some range lights are still in use, including the Birch Point range lights a half mile or so to the west of the moominbeach. The Back Light in the pic is down the beach (and back in the woods) to the east and is obviously not used any more.

The next pic is npJane standing in front of the Back Light’s ruins after it collapsed. It collapsed in the middle of the night and the sound woke Radical Betty up in her moominbeach ski chalet.

The front range light was up on the edge of the bank above the beach. Building a permanent structures ON a sand beach is usually a losing proposition. When I was a teenager, the front light was vandalized by “classmates” of mine. By “classmates”, I mean some juvenile delinquents who attended my high school. Their parents had rented the Stevens’ “cottage” for a week. Maybe they thought getting the kids out in nature would be a good thing? Instead, those kids destroyed an important piece of history. I was maybe 14 but I understood this. It was part of MY history too.

Dreamscape? It’s what I sometimes think of when I remember all of the landmarks we “expotitioned” to as beach urchins. The Back Light was one particularly interesting destination. We could walk the beach to “Dolie’s” and cut up past the old lighthouse keeper’s house but I think we usually took the old overgrown two-track down to “Dolie’s”. Past the “fox holes”, over the log bridge, then over the “cement” bridge, then we would hang a right and head to the Back Light. The path started out the same “cement” as the bridge but quickly deteriorated to dirt and moss and whatever.

Back when my cousins and I were beach urchins, we went INSIDE and climbed the staircase up to the top, from where we could see out to the beach. I’m not sure when that was deemed unsafe. Maybe it was even back when we were climbing it but that particular expotition always required an adult chaperone.

I’m not sure if this made much sense. It seems higgledy-piggledy to me. What prompted me to write it at all is that a couple weeks ago the GG ran into a North Country Trail person who knows a LOT about the light houses surrounding the moominbeach, including the one on Round Island. He has a picture of the Back Light when it was in much better shape but I won’t share it because it’s not my photo. But it reminded me of my childhood expotitions. We can still walk to the location of the Back Light but for uncountable reasons, it isn’t anywhere near the same. It’s like a dream to me now.

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