Lighthouse keepers (for a day)

It's a certain type of vacationer who enjoys mowing the lawn in an irregular formation well after dark, then eagerly rises the following morning to raise the flag at precisely 8 a.m. This on a day off.

Dave Hazelwood is that vacationer.

It's a few minutes before 8 - the appointed flag-raising hour. The flagpole stands on a patch of grass, surrounded by a quaint spattering of Adirondack chairs. Set back a bit, dwarfing the pole, sits the Rose Island Lighthouse in all its period charm: white clapboard, subdued greenish gray trim, slate shingles, the lantern room peeking off the top.

Mr. Hazelwood is in the second day of his one-week tour of duty as cokeeper of the Rose Island Lighthouse, with his wife Mary K. Like other "keepers" tending lighthouses along both coasts and the Great Lakes between, this couple, from Hermann, Mo., were drawn to the romance and rusticity of a lighthouse vacation.

Dave is decked out in the gear he's managed to accumulate from the gift shop, which they're also charged with running: salmon-colored sweatshirt stamped with the Rose Island Lighthouse imprint, green hat. Mary K. wears the same sweatshirt in purple.

As the Hazelwoods set out to raise the flag, just one task from a shockingly thick book of instructions, they explain that it's the most important.

The waving flag assures the community, and Charlotte Johnson, executive director of the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation, that everyone on the island survived the night. (A little unnecessary in light of the cellphone that connects the Hazelwoods to shore, but an endearing ritual nonetheless.)

Of an earlier era and often situated in remote and ruggedly beautiful places - isolated islands, rocky outcroppings tottering at the ocean's edge - lighthouses hold a special place in the collective imagination.

"There is some kind of wild, romantic idea about lighthouses," says Fred Mikkelsen, who maintained the Conimicut Light north of Rose Island from 1958 to 1961, and has vacationed here with his wife.

There also seems to be something about lighthouse keepers. Stalwart, solitary people whose vigilant efforts kept boats from being dashed against unseen obstacles, they, too, stand for a wild, romantic, and bygone time.

By merging the two, a number of local preservation groups have hit on a lighthouse enthusiast's dream vacation.

These programs, in the lighthouses that the Coast Guard began decomissioning en masse in the late '70s, consist of "keeper for a night" stays that can stretch as long as a month. Part service, part adventure, they're low on lazy relaxation.

But in the time I spent with the Hazelwoods, and perusing the guest book, it was clear that those who have visited this island - with a history spanning centuries that has earned it a place in the National Register of Historic Places - left it enraptured.

Rose Island's "keeper for a week" program, especially popular in summer months, can book more than a year in advance. Overnight visitors stay in the rooms downstairs. A museum by day, they were carefully reconstructed circa the early 1900s, down to the red handpump in the sink, with the help of Wanton Chase, the grandson of a keeper, who lived here until 1918.

On the evening that I arrived, I climbed a flight of stairs and gingerly made my way up a ladder into the octagonal lantern room to survey the view. It's enchanting up there, floating above the water; lights from the five other lighthouses in the Narragansett Bay glow red and green - our own white light, first lit in 1870, blinks every six seconds. To the north, the bridge linking Jamestown and Newport was strung with what, from this distance, looked to be tiny white fairy lights. All was quiet.

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