This English teacher at the Moonlights high school as a lighthousekeeper

• Matt Rosenberg, a full -time English teacher, goes by Paddleboat to maintain a Maine lighthouse.
• Rosenberg values ​​peace and the tradition of headlight outfit despite its physical requirements.
• Automation in the 1990s rendered the jobs of headcaster almost obsolete in New England.

Over the past 14 years, Matt Rosenberg has taken an unusual mode of transport to his side concert after having finished his day work as a English teacher in high school in York, Maine: a boat paddle.

Rosenberg is one of the last guards of the Maine lighthouse, where he maintains the Nubble lighthouse, a popular tourist attraction that attracts a million visitors each year in York.

In 1889, there were more than 70 lighthouse guards throughout Maine who held vital beacons of light marine warnings of dangerous conditions along the Côte de la Nouvelle-Angleterre. But automation in the 1990s has made these jobs almost obsolete full -time.

Rosenberg shared with Business Insider what his daily functions look like and why he loves his work so much.

Its daily tasks painting and repairing the lighthouse

The thousands of tourists who visit the Nubble lighthouse are not really allowed to walk on the island. Rosenberg’s biggest challenge to keep the running lighthouse is to keep it out of the environment.

“We are surrounded by salt water and in Maine, we have a lot of fog and it transports a ton of humidity,” said Rosenberg, who is employed by the city of York. He said wood is constantly rotten and metal turns into rust. He must often repaint the lighthouse.

For Rosenberg, the repair of the Nubble lighthouse is a balance between updating obsolete infrastructure and the preservation of its history of more than 100 years.

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“If we cannot follow the painting, the rust eat it and we grind it to stop rust. But when you grine grinding, you grine the story,” said Rosenberg. “So we have to be very careful to preserve what is there. Because once you lose this piece, it is no longer the same lighthouse.”

The nubble lighthouse is on an island about 300 feet from the continent, which makes it difficult to transport supplies and repairs. Small setbacks like leaving a box of screws on the shore become enormous derailments to projects on the lighthouse.

“It will take me more than an hour to go to the hardware store and come back,” said Rosenberg to have to launch her boat on her car to do small shopping. Patience is a key element of his work and seeing his work on completion.

Being a lighthousekeeper is also a physically demanding job for Rosenberg. It is often the only one carrying heavy building materials on the island through treacherous land.

“Where I throw the boat and pick up the boat, they are very slippery, the crossing,” he added.

Rosenberg’s work is only seasonal from April to January because the weather conditions of the island become unpredictable. The waves reach heights of more than 20 feet during the Nor’easter storms in March and April.

“The power lines are probably 70 feet above the water,” said Rosenberg. “We had those which are removed by the energy of the waves when they hit the shore, then go up in the power lines and turn them and destroy them.”

Why he likes the lighthouse

Despite the challenges of being a lighthouse worker, Rosenberg likes his work and wants to continue during the next decade in sixties, as long as he is physically capable. He is paid $ 21 an hour to maintain the popular tourist attraction, a duty he describes as a work of love.

“Many jobs bring you stress,” said the 51 -year -old man. “This work brings you peace, because you spend so much time in a beautiful place for yourself.” Rosenberg occasionally sees the fauna of a shark prevailing 20 feet to a pregnant doe giving birth to the island.

Autonomy and autonomy are large parts of Rosenberg’s daily life. He is proud to have been part of the tradition of the stewards of the Nubble lighthouse in his first days.

“They had no running water, they had no modern warmth at the start of the history of the lighthouse,” said Rosenberg. “The lighthousekeepers of this day were also the main living team in the surrounding area.”

The Victorian style lighthouse and painted white with its gingerbread garnish around the stages stands out on shore, a faithful recall of the past which is just out of reach of the public.

Rosenberg estimates that the elusive nature of the lighthouse is what continues to draw around a million visitors each year in their small town of 10,000 inhabitants.

Pedestrian traffic has generated $ 800,000 in raw sales per year in the gift shop, which finances revisions to the lighthouse instead of using taxpayers’ dollars. The most recent preservation project cost about $ 450,000 over five years, according to Rosenberg.

The lighthouse has been the subject of numerous articles by Rosenberg on Instagram, where it shares landscape portraits of the lighthouse at different seasons and its daily functions with thousands of followers.

“What I tried to do is give people the views of the lighthouse that they cannot have,” he said. “I think it’s a bit like a snow globe where you appreciate it in a different way, because you cannot touch it.”