Here we see the Pumpkin Island Lighthouse on Friday afternoon. It’s a good place to go in any season, if you like to watch the day do magic tricks with natural light. On Friday, the island was being side-lit by the fast-falling sun in the southwest – a horizontal layer of weak winter light that lengthened shadows into infinity.
It’s different story in the spring and summer here. The sun can go down in a raging firestorm of light directly behind the island, silhouetting its structures and piercing them in places:
Pumpkin Island is located at the northwest entrance to Eggemoggin Reach, a famous sailing channel between the Penobscot Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The powerful light on the island entered service in 1855, when many big-masted coastal cruisers were carrying timber, granite, and other commercial cargo through the Reach.
The light was operated until 1933, when the Island and its structures were sold into private ownership and have remained in private hands since. (Images taken from Little Deer Island, Maine, on November 19, 2021, and May 11, 2018.)