Table of Contents
Also by Skye Moody
FICTION
The Good Diamond
Medusa
K Falls
Habitat
Wildcrafters
Blue Poppy
Rain Dance
NONFICTION
(as Kathy Kahn)
Fruits of Our Labor
Hillbilly Women
In memory of my mother,
Donna Kelly,
who taught me to float.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Flotsam: n. 1) Wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating on the surface of the sea. Usually associated withjetsam. 2) Timber, etc., washed down by a stream.
Jetsam: n. Goods discarded from a ship and washed ashore; material thrown overboard in order to lighten a vessel (also called waveson). Usually associated withflotsam.
Lagan:n. Alsolig- (lagmar=dragnet). Goods or wreckage lying on the bottom of the sea.
Occan Surface Currents 2006 Dr. Michael Pidwimy
TIDE LINES:An Introduction
The Nautical Gods Must Be Crazy
Can a stone float? I plucked it from a rock pile six feet above the tide line. Holding it in the palm of my hand, the apricot-colored stone felt too light for a rock. It was the size of a hens egg, or a peach pit on steroids. Its narrowest end was tipped black as if dipped in an inkwell, and pockmarks riddled its surface, the way brick looks after it has lain in saltwater for a while. Yet when I ran a fingernail across its orange surface, it didnt powder like brick or tint my fingernail orange. I looked around. Why, out of millions of rocks that wash up on this beach, a varietal bazaar of colors, shapes, textures, and striations, had I singled out this particular stone? What had drawn my fickle flotsamists eye to a stone I could easily discard as just another boring chunk of baked clay washed up on the tides?
For one thing, the last high tide had shoveled ashore this pile of stones hours ago, and now beneath a burning noon-day sun, the multicolored mountain of rocks had dried to a dull gray, as colorful stones will when coated with saltwater. This orange stone lay on top of the heap. It had not dulled when dried, and it stood out the way an agate, when dry and salt-coated, still emits a luminescence that separates it from duller opaque stones. This stone wasnt glowing like an agate, but its vivid color popped despite saltwater and the suns heat.
I carried the stone to the waters edge and placed it on the becalmed ebbing tide. The greater the density of an object in relation to the amount of water it displaces, the deeper it sinks to the bottom. Spheres, like this stone, can be deceptive; the stone seemed too light to sink, yet too heavy to float. I pressed it between thumb and forefinger. It didnt react to the pressure. I held it against my ear and shook it, but couldnt tell if it was hollow.
Yet it floated. So, flotsam. That it remained floating on the waters surface suggested an air pocket inside. Ridiculous, I sneered, and snatched it up off the tide.
Turning it over in my hand, I had to make a decision: My pockets, even the hood of my sweatshirt, were chockablock with flotsam I had scored that morning along a lonely stretch of Alki Beach on the shores of Puget Sound in Washington State. I had no room for another object. If I kept this peculiar stone, Id have to toss out the little pink plastic propeller, or the white coral, or the Jagermeister screwtop with the Exacto knife inside, or the driftwood knot shaped like a talking ducks head. No, I couldnt afford to sacrifice any of my treasures for a mutant peach pit.
Years ago, in Tokyo, I accompanied a Japanese friend to a Shinto temple. The quarter-mile path to the shrine was graveled with tiny gray stones. After posting our petitions, as we returned along the gravel path, I suddenly had an inexplicable urge to lean over and pick up a certain piece of gravel, a specific stone indistinguishable from the millions of others, except it seemed to scream Pick me up! Stooping, I picked up the screamer, about the size of a nickel. Holding the tiny stone in my palm, I turned it over. A human face had been drawn on it.
Why, out of several million gravel rocks, had I chosen the one with a face drawn on the other side? The other possibility was that every stone on the Shinto path had a face drawn on its other side. For years afterward, that image haunted my dreams.
A lifetime of flotsam collecting has invested a certain discernment into my beachcombing practices. Ive learned to distinguish unusual flotsam from ordinary flotsam, and Im very picky about what I collect from the worlds beaches. This morning at Alki Point, everything in my pockets and hood had been judiciously selected as a keeper. In the end, I photographed the peculiar stone and left it on the beach near the tide line where Id found it.
Six hours later, the highest tide of the year washed over the beach. At ebb, its powerful wet fingers clawed and raked and rearranged the rocks and logs, leaving a new wrack line and a completely rearranged beach. Anything that floated had caught the seaward drift, including the mysterious stone.
Youd think after the Japanese gravel experience I would have learned my lesson. I still have that tiny piece of Shinto gravel with the face drawn on it. Alas, like the fool on his journey, I failed to look back into my knapsack of experience, and so years later, I let the special beach stone wash out on the tide.
That evening I studied the picture Id taken of the stone that floated. Now beyond my grasp, it seemed even more compelling. Something uneasy inyesthe pit of my stomach told me Id made a terrible mistake. After all, I could have carried the stone home in my mouth.
A stone light enough and impermeable enough to float. Or had I simply romanticized a chunk of brick that had been burned on one end? But wait. Check out this cool pink plastic propeller. Where do you suppose it floated in from? I decided it came off a Japanese boys toy airplane and had floated across the Pacific Ocean to wash up on a beach in Puget Sound. Now thats a great flotsam story.
Flotsam Nightmares
The nightmares changed. Now instead of a million gravel faces, I dreamed oceans of ovoid bricks came floating toward shore. As they washed onto the beach, they self-constructed a Great Wall of America all along the Pacific Coast, an impenetrable barrier whose single purpose was to strand my piscine nature from my spawn mates out at sea. On the beach side, I hammered and chiseled at the growing brick wall; more bricks floated in and reinforced the wall. Then, just before waking in sweat-soaked sheets, I saw the strange stone floating out of reach on the water side of the brick wall, a sacred object mocking my foreshortened graspy fingers.
I have tossed floating objects into the Sound only to find them, several days later, back on the beach in approximately the same spot, give or take a few yards, where Id thrown them, their traveling speed and distance dependent on the winds and the waters surface currents. Ive even experimented with the phenomenon by tossing unusual flotsam, even rocks, into the water, finding them washed up nearby again the next day, and the next, and the next.
