Sea Glass and Ocean Burps
According to Ross Gay, "It's a version of pointing, writing is. Pointing and thinking, to be more precise. Preciser still: wondering!" (quoted from an interview with Austin Kleon). I love the idea of pointing and wondering at things, and sharing that in writing. This winter there has been much to point and wonder at on the beach, whether it's low tide creatures, washed-up creepy bones, or a mysterious salp. I've also found lots of wonder-inspiring, human-made detritus while beachcombing. My holy grail would be finding a Japanese fishing float but I've only found those in antique shops. But there have still been plenty of interesting, if more modest, human-made things to point and wonder about.
For example, sea glass is irresistible, especially the bits that are identifiable as parts of bottles. There's something about that sand-blasted patina that makes pieces of sea glass both beautiful to look at and so satisfying to touch.
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| Beach glass from Discovery Park, Seattle and Wreck Beach, Vancouver, BC |
Some sea glass is really weird, and I always enjoy finding the weird things. These are pieces of bonfire glass, fragments of broken glass that have fused from heat, perhaps in a beach fire. The piece on the right even had bits of metal fused into the glass.
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| Bonfire glass from Discovery Park, Seattle and Wreck Beach, Vancouver |
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| Ceramic pieces from Wreck Beach, Vancouver and Discovery Park, Seattle |
Looking closely at the design on the piece on the right, I noticed a little section of fence and a hill. I recently read A Field Guide to Larking by Lara Maiklem, and she talks about finding fragments of china with this pattern. It's called Blue Willow pattern, and it originated in the late 1700s. The design was created in England to imitate popular imported Chinese patterns. It's still produced today, so my piece is likely modern. If you look at the plate below, you can see the fence and hills toward the bottom right that match my fragment.
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| Blue Willow pattern Credit: London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre |
A Field Guide to Larking is about Britain, so Maiklem also talks about finding glass and ceramics from Victorian, medieval, or even Roman times! I don't have much chance of finding Roman glass, but at Discovery Park a few years ago (October, 2023), we found some quite old bits of glass (for here, at least). The National Distillers whiskey bottle and Double Cola bottle fragments date from the 1940s or 1950s. The site of Discovery Park housed an army base called Fort Lawton from 1898 until the 1960s. I can imagine soldiers in their free time sitting on the beach, and maybe tossing empty bottles into the waves. Or maybe rubbish from the base was dropped in the Sound in a more intentional way. Technically, all these beach finds are trash, but somehow the wear from the ocean, and their discovery on the beach, turns them into treasure. Besides, glass eventually wears away back into sand, and I suppose that ceramics would just become clay in time.
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| Bottle fragments from Discovery Park, Seattle |
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| USQMC bowl pieces from Discovery Park, Seattle |
We found the bowl fragments, the Double Cola and National Distillers pieces, AND a possible shark braincase all on the same day. We wondered if we had experienced an ocean "burp," when more debris (both natural or human-made) than usual washes ashore. Ocean burps are associated with upwelling water and/or storms that drag more things onto the beach from the bottom than usual. If it was a burp, there's no need for the ocean to ask to be excused! It was a burp full of gifts.
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