In times of transition, change and turmoil, I go to the lighthouse.

Specifically, the Owls Head Lighthouse, located not far from where I live. I love to run up its steps and bask in the view of North Haven, Vinalhaven, the blue peaks of Camden and beyond. There’s a reason it’s such a popular summer tourist attraction. The view allows visitors a moment to reconnect with a feeling of limitlessness in a country that closes in on itself more and more every day. It’s a rare sensation.

Knox County was no different than other places leading up to the election. It is a microcosm of America in many ways. Competing signs crowded each other, back to back to back. It was all part of the landscape until I noticed that, the morning after the election had been called, someone had put a “Trump: Keep America Great” sticker in a prime location: on the Owls Head Light State Park sign.

Courtesy of Mary McGrail

A political sticker doesn’t belong there.

A state park is neutral ground, intended to welcome everyone. I tried to peel it off, but it resisted easy removal. As I struggled, glances from passing cars began to feel threatening. I returned home and brought back some Goo Gone and a garden scraper to try to peel back the sticker without damaging the sign.

There was something satisfying about watching the sticker pucker, its blue sheen discoloring under the remover. Still, it didn’t budge. The adhesive was locked into an almost permanent cling. I don’t have much experience with bumper stickers, but this one felt particularly, almost suspiciously, stubborn.

There’s something oxymoronic about choosing to put a Trump sticker on the sign to the lighthouse.

In literature, lighthouses are associated with hope. They are beacons. The built purpose of a lighthouse is to help deliver a ship safely onward, not to turn around and return to dangerous waters and a perilous state it has already traversed.

The morning after Trump won, I saw a man pull his car off the road and casually grab a Harris-Walz sign out of the ground. My quest should have been as simple. Aren’t we both exercising our right? But why does it feel like such a charged act to push back in this way? Am I participating in an act of protest by attempting to remove a sticker that is, at its core, simply defacing public property?

There’s an irony to the way things are in this state, this country and the world, that writing an op-ed about my attempted removal may inspire upward of 50 Trump stickers to be placed on the Owls Head Light State Park sign by tomorrow morning.

It is not about the back and forth, but instead, about keeping a patient eye toward the future. Vice President Kamala Harris, in her concession speech, notably said that though she concedes the election, she does not concede the fight. It is a long race. The same way that, in four years, yes, count them, the Owls Head Lighthouse, with its prime coastal location, will be one of the first places in America to again usher in a new day.