STRANDED!

OUR ROUND ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE ADVENTURE

by Jo Addie

In early spring when INSITE member Lynn Anderson first broached the subject of arranging a private tour of the Round Island Lighthouse to me, for the days immediately following the Chicago Somewhere In Time Celebration, my first reaction was one of passive reluctance. While the lighthouse is at once undeniably charming, vivid with its red, white and black painted color scheme, it remains an indelible symbol of Richard and Elise's togetherness to all Somewhere In Time fans. I also knew that 99.9 percent of everyone who has ever visited Mackinac Island has never set foot on this remote spot, let alone had the opportunity to go inside....but I suppose I was so embroiled in the planning of "The Event" that I could hardly project my life beyond June 21st. And yet, having virtually nothing else on my mind for nearly six months, the idea of the whirlwind trip up to Mackinac to tour the lighthouse with the man in charge of its restoration began to feel like the perfect tonic to my unavoidable singlemindedness. I thought that I might feel like the bottom had dropped out of my life after the event was over, and what better place to enjoy my breakdown than at the place that started my intimate involvement with the film during its creation in 1979. And, since my husband Jim and I have documented all the phenomenal Somewhere In Time Weekends on video to share with avid fans who can only dream of attending such affairs, the lighthouse tour seemed like a requirement to film for all the fans who cherish this symbol of our favorite couple's outing.

The plan to meet Dick Moehl at the Mackinaw City marina dock was set for 10 am Monday, and our seven and a half hour drive from Chicago on Sunday stretched into ten as we stopped to antique along the way. I was really enjoying the leisureliness of the trip--the very first trip we were not rushing to meet a sporadic ferry schedule, weighed down with a trailer full of projection equipment we usually cart up to the island for the Weekends. We arrived at Mackinaw City at 11 pm, and proceeded to chat with Lynn, and Cheryl Abel from New Jersey about the event until 1 am; I was still on an adrenaline surge that had kept me from sleeping a wink the night before the Event, and had slept only six hours that night. So when I awoke from my coma with Lynn's rousing phonecall at eight, I wondered if I would have the stamina to stand up to the wind and climb around the huge rocks that line the very narrow Round Island peninsula, but after all, that was the plan.

We breakfasted together appropriately at the Lighthouse Restaurant in Mackinaw City on this sunny morning. The touring party consisted of the five of us, Lynn, Cheryl, Jim, our son Shane and I, and at Dick's boat we met up with about nine others who were going to share in this rare opportunity. Though quite amiable, Dick sternly charged all of us to wear life preservers on his large cabin cruiser, in case one of us would fall off the boat during the tossing of the crossing, because he said, "If you fall overboard you can pass out from the shock since the water is very cold." And he added, "Don't stray away from the group to explore, because a big storm is heading in and the weather can change fast, so we might have to leave the lighthouse in a hurry." I didn't really know how we were going to get to Round Island--it is uninhabited, and as far as I knew there were no places to land a cabincruiser--no dock, and I remembered that when the film company had first planned to use this location for the film, production manager Britt Lomond had all sorts of logistics to work out, renting an army launch, with lunch for the crew and outhouses too, just to film for one afternoon. Then I overheard someone say we were going over to the lighthouse in a dinghy. A dinghy!? The incomprehensible thought flashed through my mind. Impossible! We're talking the Straits of Mackinac here....where large ferry boats churn up the already rough water, and gigantic freighters plow through, carrying coal and iron ore, kicking up huge wakes. Surely they must mean dinghy in a categorical way--perhaps a sizable metal boat would appear to take us all, since there were so many of us. But no, I was wrong.

The plan was set for us to arrive first in the marina of Mackinac Island, and then we were to split up into small groups in shifts--groups of six that overweighted the six foot inflatable dinghy with a wood bottom for the crossing to Round Island. I felt great trepidation at this concept, but I didn't have much time to ponder the various worries that began to creep into my mind--before I knew it, we were docked at the island and Jim, Shane and I were climbing down the ladder into the tiny boat with a bearded young man named Peter, a woman named Robin, who works for the Forest Service, which now owns the lighthouse, and her friend, Nina. We were the first shift, and after we looked back to wave at Lynn and Cheryl and the rest of the group on Dick's boat, I turned to Jim and shook my head. "I don't believe what we are doing", I said, as we tried to keep all of our knees from knocking against each other. Crossing the Straits of Mackinac in a dinghy! Praying that we wouldn't hit any large waves, or boat wakes, I thought back to all those B-movies of the sixties and fifties, depicting a disaster or a monster's attack, and there would always be one woman inappropriately dressed. This time I was the woman. Thinking I might do an on camera bit of narration during the tour, I wore a long teal crinkle silk skirt and fancy jacket under my rainjacket, and chunky heeled sandals. I always get what I call "island hair" everytime I'm in this vicinity, due to the dampness, so I wanted to at least be dressed nicely, but here in the dinghy, on the slow trip to Round Island, I thought of little else but being washed over the side and swimming in my ill planned outfit in icy water, helping Shane and Jim hold up our expensive camera gear....our derrieres were poised just a foot or so over the waves as it was!

Miraculously, we made the crossing with hardly a drop of splash, and pulled up to the rough, pebbly stretch of beach. Peter drew the dinghy out of the water to rest on the angular shore. We had arrived. Knowing that a storm might approach at any minute, we immediately set to work to photograph and film the lighthouse in the light of a now clouding sky. It was larger than I expected, with three floors, and quite beautiful with the sound of the waves crashing all around it. Since the filming in '79, two more loads of giant limestone rocks had been placed all around, to prevent the foundation from washing away. Not that long ago a huge gaping hole had been torn in the corner of the building by a storm, remarkable in that the lighthouse has a three-course brick wall structure, two courses together and then an air space between the the two and the third, to provide natural insulation. The lighthouse was in imminent danger of collapse. It had been dark for years, having been replaced by a new, smaller lighthouse nearby. But people came to its rescue and had the abandoned structure repaired. Just before the filming it was in its best condition in decades. Wearing a new coat of paint since August, it hardly looked its 102 year age now, all lovingly restored. Robin, Peter and Nina went ahead to open the lighthouse while we shot, and I was feeling quite satisfied that our objective had been fulfilled. I really didn't need to go inside, I thought, it'll probably be rather boring with its clean, white walls. But the moment I set foot inside, I let out an audible, "Ooooooh!" It was positively desolate! I flashed back to my tomboy years, exploring abandoned buildings in my woodsy neighborhood. The thrill of picking my way through a house with the walls crumbling away flooded back to me and my heart started racing! What a treat! Totally unrestored on the inside the lighthouse seemed haunted....in a pitch dark room on the ground floor, Jim's video light streamed over an enormous apparatus, a five foot diameter wheel and horizontal metal structure we learned later was the generator that built up the air pressure for the fog horn. The others had evidently gone up ahead of us, but we didn't hear a living sound as I started up the twisting staircase. My eyes were wide with excitement...plaster had fallen off the walls, exposing the lath, and on the second floor were many rooms where the lightkeeper would stay. The floors were bare wood that looked ancient. We stepped through the rooms that radiated from the center staircase, identifying what had been a shower stall, the light soft and mellow from the heavy iron shuttered windows. I still did not hear a soul, except for our own steps, and continued up into the tower.

There we found the threesome with their eyes skyward, using a long pole to clear away the cobwebs from the vertical iron ladder to the light itself. Through a crescent shaped opening in the ceiling we could see part of the pedestal for the light housing. With a word of encouragement for us to go ahead, the three of us climbed the ladder, I having first wrapped my skirt around my legs. Once there, in the cramped top of the tower, I was disappointed to not be able to see the view I expected, for the windows were made of frosted glass. I called down, "How do you see out?" They said, "Open the door", and the three of us began looking around for a door which wasn't there. From below, Robin pointed to a spot on the black metal half wall, and I began to discern the faint outline of a trapdoor. Removing the metal pin, I pushed it out and we had to bend way down to step out onto the walkway that went all around the light. What a spectacular moment! Three tall flights over the waves all around us, and only jagged rocks below--and the wind seemed to beat at us from all directions. Just a moment after getting our bearings outside, I heard a call from below, "Can you see the dinghy?"

I peered out down the peninsula toward where we had landed, only to see the dinghy floating free! "The dinghy's loose!" I yelled. Peter took off down the lighthouse stairs to catch it. If we had caught it right then, a mere waist-high wading would have been enough. But it was moving fast in the wind. Just twelve or so feet off shore when I first saw it, by the time Peter scaled the rocks to the shore, it had drifted over thirty feet! Somebody was going swimming! The poor guy, I thought, as he hesitated a moment before going into the water....it's only 53 degrees and the water is about the same temperature. Then to my horror I realized Peter was going in with his shoes on and without his lifevest! "Oh my God!" I thought, from three flights up looking down at Peter, up to his chin in icy water. Dick's words about passing out from the cold came to me like a lightning bolt. We were too far away to be able to help him should he have trouble, and what if there were currents, or an undertow? The dinghy was now forty feet out, and all I could think as I gripped the handrail, "Oh, no, I'm going to watch a man drown today!", and a sick, intense fear gripped me. Peter made a valiant attempt to catch the dinghy, but from our vantage point it was apparent it was hopeless. Would Peter conclude the same, before hypothermia would get him? He wisely turned back and swam back to the rocks. I was so relieved to see him make it out of the water. How foolish we all had been- not pulling the dinghy more than three quarters out of the water. Our family has a cottage on a lake in northern Wisconsin and we know well how fast a boat can drift, even a weighty one, but we had assumed that our "leaders" knew what they were doing, having been there before--they hadn't even brought radios--and now we were stranded at the lighthouse.

It would only be a matter of time before we were rescued. I reassured Shane. After all, people knew where we were, and they'd get to wondering about us before much longer. It could be worse. It could be storming, and fortunately the bad weather never came our way. We decided to enjoy the feeling of being stranded at Round Island. Nina and Robin gave Peter some of their layers of shirts, so he could at least be dry on top. I was surprised to find him not trembling uncontrollably, and stopped worrying about hypothermia, now that he was inside, out of the wind. We stayed on top of the lighthouse, attempting to flag down the ferry boats going by, without success. The ferryboat drivers pass by the lighthouse so often, they apparently don't even look at it. Then again, three or four people waving on top of the high tower probably are invisible from that distance, particularly against its contrasting colors of red and black. The dinghy kept on drifting out farther and farther, barely discernable. It would be at least a half hour before another ferry went by, so I decided to go inside for more pictures of the rooms. Sooner or later, someone would come. In a short while, I heard someone yell from above, "They've got the Zodiac--someone run down to the beach!" I ran down the winding stairs and outside, grabbing a lifevest on the way and over the rocks to the shore. I stood there waving the orange lifevest over my head. We could see, about a third mile out, a sizeable speedboat towing the dinghy behind it toward Mackinac Island. If we could get their attention---I decided that I would resort to lifting my billowy teal skirt to gain their attention if need be.....

The waving paid off. Their wave in return had us all breathing a sigh of relief! Bob Peterson of Cheboygan and his wife and son were out for a pleasure cruise to the island, and they spotted the empty dinghy. Bob brought the dinghy to us, while his wife Pat steered their boat in place, and we gratefully thanked Bob as we clambered in. A freighter was passing the lighthouse now, and Bob said we'd better get aboard his boat before the wake hit, and we did so with speed. The tossing from the wake was unbelievable, even though some of us were safe in the bow cabin--we looked at each other thinking what it would have been like in the dinghy! They brought us back to the island marina, with the Zodiac in tow. Bob's son said he was a hero, and we heartily agreed, saying he should use that to his advantage in the future! The rest of our party were at the rail of Dick's boat as we came near, looking worried, "We had an adventure!", I called out. With wry grins--some wider than others, we climbed out onto the dock, and shook Bob's hand again and said goodbye. I must say it was great to be waving off the next group, with radios on board this time, and to stroll on the firm soil of the crowded island and have lunch.

As I write this at first light on June 27th, (the anniversary of Richard and Elise's first meeting), I marvel at the bizarre set of circumstances that first landed me on the set of SIT, to work for three extraordinary weeks on the film, (see July, '91 issue of INSITE) as well as the years of incredible fun I've thoroughly enjoyed being part of INSITE and attending every SIT event. Yet, the excitement and thrill of our Round Island Lighthouse adventure will linger in memory forever. Every time I pass it from now on, it will be more to me than just a symbol of Somewhere In Time....and I'll be smiling a different smile.