Sylvester's Climb

Medium: Ink and graphite on Arches paper, mounted to birch panel, varnished

Dimensions: 14" x 18"

Long Island, New York

The Story:
It is said that lobsters mate for life, and in many ways this is true of a lobster named Sylvester. The only small difference was that he did not dedicate his life to another lobster, but a lighthouse. He found out of her existence one night as he climbed on a rock, watching her enchanting glow from afar. Another fact about lobsters is that they can live up to 100 years. While again this was true of Sylvester, that was proven over 70 years ago. He was 172, and the strangest thing of all is that he never stopped growing. He was as big as a shark, perhaps even bigger. He would always hide himself, scared that if humans found out about him he would surely be captured and become a science experiment. But Sylvester did not fear for his own suffering; he mostly did not want to be caught out of fear that a big storm would come and he would not be here to protect her, his lighthouse. He figured something that beautiful must need protecting.
News of a storm coming had surfaced, though Sylvester was not sure when it would arrive. He always felt that his strongest skill was climbing; he loved scaling boulders and rocks. This would be the hardest climb of all, but she was worth it to him. So when the inevitable night came and the waters churned like mad and the wind could move mountains, he climbed. He climbed out of the sea and up onto her rough exterior. He shielded her with his own shell, terrified that something might happen to her. As the storm battered his shell and he struggled to hold on, he had a sudden realization: she didn’t need protecting. She would remain standing, with or without him. She was the one who, in storms like this, protected countless souls lost at sea. But even with this realization, he did not climb down. Because although she did not need protecting, Sylvester knew that she deserved to have someone by her side on her most difficult nights.
So they went on like that. With every storm he would climb her, holding her as the storm roared around them. Every storm was different, and he was never certain of what difficulties each would bring. The only thing he was certain of was that he would be there to hold her as they faced those difficulties together.