The Baron in the Trees (english version)

Nick is a psychologist. He treats patients affected by gambling syndrome. Before taking up this profession he worked at different jobs, he was a logger, a sales agent, a bartender, a postman, and last but not least a lighthouse guardian. He was employed at a lighthouse on a distant island for a few months only, but it was a time that he treasured in his heart.

The sensation of being there with his head literally in the clouds while scanning the horizon through his binoculars has never left his mind, even though his life has taken a different path, one that makes his feet tread the earth.

Every day Nick has dreamed of his faraway lighthouse, wondering if he could recapture the sense of happy solitude it had given him.

An idea dawned on him. He started taking notes and making sketches in the evenings, to relieve the strain of the days spent with his patients at the clinic. He would use the same drawing instruments from the time of college, and he filled pages with the dream he wanted to act out. He’d work without stint, indifferent to his friends’ sardonic comments.

He wanted to build a lighthouse of his own. He chose the site in a smaller island, not far from the bigger island where he lives and works.

He bought an old jeep car and a nomads’ camper to start with. His son John together with friends decorated the camper with big tropical flowers. Nick used a discarded kitchen appliance motor to build a little water pump. On top the camper he installed a solar panel that was not much bigger than a box of biscuits, in order that he could make tea when he wanted some. Britishness is something you are not going to drop only because you live down under!

Nick used the camper as his builders’ shelter and his summer house for 3 years, the time he took to erect the lighthouse you see in the photo. The tower is 15 metres high, each level a single room, the uppermost level still underway will sport a glass ceiling to observe the night sky with a telescope. To climb the tower there are simple steps to a trap-door on to the next floor. You ought to make sure to shut the trap-door when you’ve made your way into the next level though. Besides, you better not leave something you need behind, since walking the stairs up and down is not that easy. But then – Nick is happy!

To build his tower Nick used some of the gum trees which populate the forest all around him. He has used 50kg nails so far. To lift the tree trunks supporting the exagon structure, he used his jeep as a crane of sorts, for the rest taking example from the Roman engineer legionaries.

Sitting in deck chairs in front of Nick’s lighthouse, while breathing in the bracing smell of eucalypts, George and I were reminded of Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees. 

When we had to leave the place heading for the evening ferry, we had a last glimpse of Nick on roof waving at us. It made us think that the realization of one’s dream  is what happiness is about.