The first couple of times Meghan Agresto came to Currituck County, she didn’t visit the lighthouse. “When I came in 2002, it was $6 to climb,” she says, “but I didn’t have six bucks.” Twenty-two years later, Agresto climbs the 220 steps daily and calls the Currituck Beach Lighthouse home. Her contagious personality shines as bright as the tower’s original Fresnel lens. “I have a voice that sounds like a mad cigarette smoker because I talk too much,” she says. But extroversion isn’t a bad trait for a modern-day lighthouse keeper, especially one who welcomes thousands of visitors each summer.

For an outgoing former Fulbright Scholar and Greek classics major at UNC Chapel Hill, a job in a tiny village on a sandy spit 13 miles from the Virginia state line might seem like an unlikely final destination. But Agresto felt a calling. “When the job for lighthouse keeper became available, I thought, ‘There’s no other place for me in the world,’” she says.

At 30 years old, she accepted a position that merged her interest in history with her love of people. She moved with her family from Chapel Hill to Corolla and restored an order that no other lighthouse in North Carolina can claim — Currituck Beach is the state’s only lighthouse with an acting keeper and family. “The definition of a lighthouse is that there’s a house there, right?” Agresto says. “Otherwise, it’s an aid to navigation. It’s only a lighthouse if someone has lived there.”

She and Luis Garcia have served as principal keepers since 2005, making her one of the longest-serving keepers in the tower’s history. Since then, she’s had a second child, helped charter a village school, overseen four major restoration projects, and watched her oldest son graduate from high school. Maggie, her 95-pound Bernese mountain dog, is her constant companion as Agresto greets visitors, cares for the grounds, and attends to lighthouse duties like sweeping the tower.

Today, a knock at the door of the old storage building, now Agresto’s wood-paneled office, elicits a call-and-response from Maggie. Agresto hushes her, then quickly fills the void with gregarious conversation. She meanders from one story about a former keeper to another about the visionaries who saved the lighthouse from being torn down in the ’80s. She’s interrupted every five minutes by her phone’s alarm, reminding her to feed the chickens out back.

Abruptly, she spins around in her desk chair and pecks at her laptop keyboard. “I want to read you something. You’re going to like this,” Agresto says, narrating her way through her desktop folders. “Here it is!” She sounds equal parts surprised and excited. “I’ve made a list. I call it ‘Things About Lighthouses.’ You ready for all the things that people love about lighthouses? They represent steadfastness. There is romance. They are sublime. They’re reassuring. They’re a guide. They are there when you need help. They are solid and indifferent. They are quaint.” The list continues on for several minutes. She looks up. “I think the truth of the matter is, it’s the bird’s-eye view people want. They want to be like a bird, only they can’t be,” she says matter-of-factly.

To get that view, you’ll have to pay a little more than the $6 that she couldn’t afford in 2002. This year, admission is $13. If she’s around, the conversation with Agresto is included. It’s worth the extra money.