Diary of a Piece of Driftwood
A piece of driftwood was floating between two rocks in a pool formed by the tide.
I wanted it.
My dad fished it out of the water.
He said that it wasn’t a particularly attractive piece of driftwood.
I liked the rusty nails hanging from it and the stripes formed by glue from broken joints.
I was drawn to the features which implied that it had once been a part of something else.
There were holes that looked like woodworm. I wondered whether the wood had acquired them before or after it had begun its life at sea.
I allowed anthropomorphism to take hold.
I wondered where the driftwood had been, how far it had travelled, what it had seen on its journey.
I decided that I would release it back into the ocean, and I would attempt to track it; not with a satellite tracking device, but by writing a message and hoping.
In their experiments, driftologists recover around 5% of the items they release into the ocean.
There is a very small chance that anyone will ever find this piece of driftwood in a readable condition.
This would make it all the more wonderful if anyone ever did.
I threw the driftwood back into the sea off Trevose Head (Cornwall, UK) on 15th April 2012.
On the wood I have written a message asking whoever finds it to let me know when and where, so that I can document its journey.
The wood is once again at the mercy of the ocean.
