WOULD YOU VOLUNTEER TO BE STRANDED?
Tending a lone island must rank high amongst people’s wish lists. Why not? Disconnected from the pressures and whims of our 21st century, huddled inside a 19th-century mansion, surrounded by empty beaches, natural beauty, and lots of wildlife. Heck – this could very well be the best job in the world!
It could have if this piece of land was stranded in the middle of the South Pacific archipelago of Tahiti. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Desert Rock is an aptly named piece of barren rock. Its 3.5 Acres are laid low in the cold northwest Atlantic, about 30km south of the coast of Maine. The place houses a mid 19th-century lighthouse, a crumbling wooden mansion, and about 100 Seals that call this forsaken place home. Swimsuits are unnecessary. Waters are cold, and winters are stormy – dipping way below freezing. Save your Mojito and Pinna-Colada. Bring a casket of Whiskey instead.
Because it’s there
Pioneer George Mallory said that he set to climb Mt. Everest “because it was there”. The same could also be said of Desert Rock, albeit in the latter it was to prevent a potential catastrophe – not to foster it (Mallory and his team perished on their 1923 attempt). Known for poor weather and fog, this inhospitable outcrop of bare rock first gained notoriety as a major ship hazard. Something had to be done. Given the lack of GPS, in the late 18th century, the solution was to build a 20 meter-high lighthouse. An adjacent spacious home for the lighthouse keeper and his family was erected slightly later.
I stumbled across the “Rock” during a family summer vacation while trying to (fruitlessly) spot Humpback Whales across the vast, empty Atlantic. It all started when I boarded the boat with my three kids at the picture-perfect fishing village of Bar Harbor, Maine. The weather was sunny and visibility perfect. Time to picture some whales. 90 gusty & cold minutes later my optimism faded. Frustrated and shivering the only thing I could spot from a distance was a weird-looking tower jutting straight from the water surface. One of the kids was feeling sick. The other two were bitching about the lack of cellular reception.
Things happen when you got nothing better to do
With nothing better to do, and determined not to call the whole expensive affair a sunk-loss (sorry for the pun) we started sailing closer. The tower soon revealed itself as an old lighthouse with an adjoining big wooden house on top of a tiny rocky outcrop. I couldn’t help thinking what it must have been like living on these remote rocks a hundred years ago. Having no one to talk to but the seals, nowhere to go to but the nearby rocks and nobody to call for help if something went wrong.
Modern navigation aids have rendered all lighthouses – including this particular one – obsolete. To add pain to injury, the wooden 19th-century house was badly damaged during 2009 Hurricane Bill. The elements soon started to take their own toll on the sturdy brick tower as well. It looked as if the place was destined to serve as a crumbling photo-op for folks with expensive cameras and no whales to “shoot”.
Then my lens focused on few figures waving hands at us from the house’s balcony. Desert Rock was not deserted.
After being abandoned by the US Coast Guard and almost destroyed in a storm surge, Desert Rock has reinvented itself. This time as a research lab for marine mammals and birds. The place is occupied around the clock by students from Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic.
Short on adventures? Have a spare dawn coat and a pair of flip flops? Would you volunteer to be stranded?
If you do, you can sign up here.