Steven returned his photography gear to the back of his ‘71 Chevy Constitution, closed the door and asked Mr. Ward about the light shining through the trees. The sun was below the treeline on the other end of the valley, casting long shadows across what Steven and I affectionately called The Lost Highway. And in the not yet darkened sky, I picked out a white light - on for about a second and off for three. Still out of breath from the mile and a half hike back from Ed Ward’s strange pit of possible unworldly terrors, I might have missed the light altogether. I certainly wasn’t curious.
“That’s the Bartram Lighthouse.”
In 1931, salt magnate, Hans Klemens Fischer, purchased the Bartram Lighthouse on the coast of South Carolina. Over the course of the summer, hired workers dissembled lighthouse down to the foundation. Each brick, steel I-beam, and lens was shipped via the Carolina Piedmont, then by truck over unpaved mining roads to a hill overlooking Sugarcamp Valley. It took three years, but since the dark winter of 1934 the Bartram Lighthouse has been an enigmatic beacon.
Steven’s curiosity got the final vote. We headed down the Lost Highway towards the lighthouse, navigating potholes and fallen debris from the pine trees and one section washed out in a long abated storm. The antique monster going over whatever our eyes missed. We took the paved sideroad as Mr. Ward instructed us, and a series of switchbacks brought us to the ridgeline and the towering lighthouse.
The red sandstone glimmered under lamps ringing the base of the structure but reaching only halfway up the seven story tower. The groundskeeper’s wife invited us in from the door. Her husband was on an errand in the city, she said, offering us coffee and a slice of german chocolate cake. She knew little about the history of the lighthouse other than her husband’s grandfather had left the coal mines after being offered the position as Attendent by Fischer. We watched Jeopard! with her and then talked about her childhood in the Appalachians. She offered us beds for the night, two twins in a guest room.
That night I dreamed of a lighthouse that had grown weary of watching the sea and the ships sailing up and down the coast so willed itself down the cliff, with a splash. A tempest lasting days and nights pulled the lighthouse far out to ocean beyond the land, and then adrift into a shallow sea underneath a beating sun. The water receded with the outgoing tide and never returned, becoming a sandy desert ringed by mountains.
Then I woke to Steven shaking me. It was still dark outside. He insisted on going, right then and refused to explain. We returned down the ridgeline road and then on to the Lost Highway, the last 100 feet or so removed by the state before joining Highway 134. Steven insists, now, that he had been spooked by a bad dream but refuses to return with me. Our editor says I’m more than welcome to go alone and take a camera with me.