Beacon on the Bluff: A Visit to Highland Light

Yesterday, the road took us to Truro.   Cape Cod stretches like a crooked arm into the Atlantic, and by the time you reach Truro, you’re deep into the Cape’s upper reaches—past the bustle, past the ice cream traffic jams, past the gift shops promising fudge and regret. It’s quieter here. Wilder. The trees are wind-shaped and the dunes roll like ancient, sleeping beasts. And at the very edge of it all, standing tall like it’s got something to prove, is Highland Light.   Sadie and I ended up there almost by accident. That’s the best way these things happen. We’d been driving with the windows down, sand still stuck to our calves from Head of the Meadow earlier in the day, the old Porsche humming along with the kind of rhythm you only get after a long day of sun and salt. We weren’t looking for anything in particular, just driving that stretch of road that hugs the Cape’s outer curve like a half-forgotten love letter.   And then she said, almost absentmindedly, “You ever been to Highland Light?”   I hadn’t. She hadn’t either. Which, frankly, was enough.   So we went.   You can’t miss it once you’re close. Highland Light—also known as Cape Cod Light—isn’t just some cutesy clapboard tourist stop. It’s the oldest lighthouse on the Cape, built in 1797 at George Washington’s command, which immediately gave it historical street cred. This thing has seen some things. Storms, shipwrecks, fog so thick it could suffocate a thought. It’s a proper lighthouse—tall, stoic, whitewashed, and vaguely judgmental in the way New England structures often are. It’s the architectural equivalent of your great-grandmother: elegant, stern, and unimpressed by your modern nonsense.   We parked and made our way toward it, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the bluff. The wind was strong—constant and briny, like the sea was whispering something just out of earshot. Behind the lighthouse, the land just… ends. A 120-foot cliff drops off into open Atlantic, and you can see the curve of the world if you look hard enough. It’s the kind of view that makes you shut up for a second. Even Sadie, who rarely meets a moment she doesn’t want to narrate, fell quiet.   The lighthouse itself was closed for climbing by the time we got there—apparently their hours are more “gentle docent” and less “adventurous wanderer”—but that didn’t matter. We walked around it slowly, reading the old signs about its relocation in the 1990s. The cliff had eroded so much that the whole lighthouse had to be moved back from the edge or risk falling into the sea. The idea of something that solid, that unshakable, having to move to survive? That stuck with me.   Sadie leaned against the fence and looked out over the ocean like she was watching something only she could see. Maybe she was. The light was just starting to shift to gold, the sky painted in that gauzy pre-sunset blur of lavender and coral. Gulls dipped and spun in the breeze. Somewhere far below, waves crashed rhythmically into the cliff face, like a heartbeat underfoot.   We stood there a long time. Not talking much. Just… being.   Eventually, she broke the silence.   “It’s kind of romantic,” she said.   I nodded. “Yeah. You, me, and a 200-year-old tower that’s probably haunted.”   She smirked. “If it’s haunted, I hope the ghost’s a sailor who tells you to use sunscreen.”   “Ghost sailors don’t get sunburn,” I countered. “They get poetic and salty and say things like ‘dead ahead, ye fool!’”   She laughed at that—one of those real, head-thrown-back laughs—and for a moment I wished I could bottle that sound, store it somewhere safe for the colder months. The ones when we’re elbow-deep in work and can’t remember the last time we saw the sky without hospital glare.   As we headed back to the car, the light behind us clicked on—a clean, piercing white beam slicing through the dusk like it had a job to do. It turned slowly, silently, casting long shadows over the grass and dunes. You could feel it—this living artifact, still guiding ships that haven’t yet realized they’re lost.   We didn’t stay much longer. Just long enough to take one photo, which I’m fairly sure will end up framed somewhere in our home before summer ends. And then we drove off into the softening evening, top down, hair tangled by wind, skin still tasting of salt and sun.   There was no dramatic conclusion. No revelation. Just the quiet realization that we’d found a perfect place to pause. A place where land meets sea, where old things endure by adapting, and where a lighthouse still turns its eye toward the dark—not to chase it away, but to remind you that you’re not alone in it.   And honestly, isn’t that the whole point of a good day?