January Photograph #5 - The Bottle

One of the things around here to do is to dig bottles. We are a small town surrounded by water. The Cape fear river on one side, the Intercoastal Waterway on another then farther on the Atlantic Ocean. Interspersed among these are several swamps, coastal creeks and a lot of marsh land.

South of town, along the river they used to take the garbage out in wagons and dump it along the river. When the tide came in the coastal creeks and river would swell and the garbage would disappear. The organic stuff would be eaten by the marine animals and birds, the metal would rust and erode, and all that would be left would be glass and pottery.

Every few months, several of us go bottle digging to these dump sites. The bottles are covered in yuck when you first get them. We take buckets and several gallons of water. This bottle is an ammonia bottle. The chemicals have reacted with the soil and water to make this snowy pattern on the bottle. With the light streaming in on it it is so beautiful.