A Clear October Day at Point Reyes Lighthouse
No fog at Point Reyes, which apparently is rare enough to note — the lighthouse was built 275 feet down the bluff in 1870 precisely because the fog out here sits low and would swallow a higher light. Today you could see the whole sweep of the Great Beach from the top of the headlands before even starting down, surf lines stacked up the coast for miles.
The way down is about 313 stairs past cliffs of conglomerate, cobbles stuck in the rock like raisins. Iceplant covers the slopes above the water, gone red for the fall. The lighthouse itself is small — the tower barely clears the fog signal building next to it — but the lens is the thing: first-order Fresnel, a thousand glass prisms, and it ran 105 years before they retired it in 1975.
Walked out past the buildings to the end of the point, where a big flat rock sits just offshore taking waves from both sides, gulls parked on top and not moving for any of it. Then the 313 stairs again, going the other way.
