Finders Keepers
sculpted by the tide,
the waves, the wind. Perfection
at the water’s edge
The most precious thing I ever found was a small green Japanese fishing float. This glass ball had escaped its net in a storm and drifted thousands of miles, washing up at my feet at Wickaninnish Beach, on Vancouver Island’s west coast, in 1990. It was about the size of a tennis ball and I’d been searching for it for months. In those days I worked at the Wickaninnish Interpretive Centre on Long Beach. Every lunch break, heavy winter rains notwithstanding, I’d scour the beach in hope of finding what is surely the beachcomber’s most coveted treasure. But I’d always understood that a glass ball’s story would end once it was found. I didn’t expect that my future life on the water would enable the story to continue.
Living on water has many perks: light from the water’s surface dappling the ceiling; the hypnotic glide of the current; the wildlife—seals, birds, whales—passing without warning; and the way the landscape transforms from land to water to land again. Once, after I’d been living on the water for several years, I visited my family in England and experienced a strange variant of culture shock. No matter how often I went to the window, the green lawn never once crept closer or retreated. The view never changed, though I had.
But there are drawbacks to living on the water. There are the storms: tedious insomnia from listening to the house creak and groan; the jarring tug of the lines as gusts of wind push the house to its point of maximum resistance; the daily commutes made complicated by wind and waves. And there are the little things: the maintenance of boats and motors; the impossibility of walking anywhere without taking a boat first; the sulphurous mats of summer seaweed; the maintenance of anchor lines; the falling in of people, dogs, objects—keys, sunglasses, cellphones, hammers, nails, pieces of firewood—the list is long. Some things are recoverable. Act quickly and you can get them back. Others sink, disappearing into soft dark mud, an Atlantis of lost items, the ocean floor littered with strange clues.
Sinking problems aside, the movement of floating objects by water has a mythical attractiveness few can resist. Ocean charts show swirling currents, tiny arrows leading from here to there, continent to continent, culture to culture. Occasionally the arrows culminate in a gyre from which some objects never escape, or sailors arrive in horse latitudes where they languish, becalmed, for days on end. The shoreline, too, is a provider of surprises. Beachcombing is a much-loved pastime, casual for some, obsessive for others. But the finding of objects is based on the premise that the objects have first been removed from somewhere else. One woman’s gift is another woman’s loss.
I knew about glass balls because my father had found them when I was a child growing up in the West Indies. He’d been lucky enough to find a large one, turquoise-green, about the size of a beach ball. On the day I found mine, I was particularly pleased because a well-known glass ball fanatic had been on the beach not long before me. The ball had somehow escaped detection by his experienced eyes, so it felt as if this treasure was truly meant for me.
After so many months, when I finally saw the small green shape glistening on the sand, I stared for several long seconds, belief suspended. Then I pounced on it. I clutched it to my chest. I whooped. A pair of ravens eyed me askance and hop-waddled to the safety of the driftwood logs. I ran the length of the beach, laughing.
For days afterwards, the story of this precious treasure echoed through my head as I re-enacted the moment for friends and family members—or to anyone who would listen. And there it sat, on my counter, prompting me to recall its moment of discovery every time I saw it. I admired the way it glowed in the light of a candle—the captured breath of the glass blower brought alive by the flame. I thought of that breath, the way a single exhalation had kept the glass afloat through years of work and further years of travel, as it crossed the vast Pacific. As glass balls go, it may have been small and ordinary, but to me it was extraordinary.
In 1995, five years after finding the glass ball, I moved from the cabin on Stone Island in the Tofino Harbour, down the ramp to my freshly constructed floathouse, moored at the same island’s dock. Friends came over to move boxes down the long pier that stretched high over the water before descending a precarious ramp to the floathouse. This moving party was a celebration. After years of do-it-yourself carpentry, no part of which is ever simple on a floathouse, and for which I have little aptitude anyway, there was now a finished product and I had become a homeowner. Finally, I could unpack the boxes of belongings I hadn’t seen for years. But all of this was happening at the busiest time of year for a sea kayak guide. I was working long days, often getting home at dark. So while the moving of the boxes was significant, unpacking would have to wait. About a week later, one of the helpers remembered something that had happened during the move and thought to tell me about it. “By the way,” he said, “while we were moving stuff, one of your glass balls rolled out of a box. It landed in the water and floated away.”
I sat down.
“One of my glass balls?” I echoed, grasping the back of the chair for support.
“You know,” he continued, waving his hand, “one of those little green ones.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to keep my face from collapsing. “One of those.”
I mourned my glass ball. I pictured its moment of loss: the long sloping pier, twenty feet above water in places. I saw the cardboard box, sandwiched between muscular forearms and sternum, its contents shifting with every footfall. I saw the gaps between the weathered planks, the deep green water glinting. I saw the downward migration of the box, from sternum to abdomen, forcing the carrier to stop at the railing and reposition. I pictured arms thrusting the box upward to renew their grasp. And there it was—the small green glass ball sailing out over the worn wooden railing, falling so lightly, just the merest splash.
One woman’s loss.
Did it go back out to sea? Or did it wash up at my neighbour’s place, the next island in the harbour? Was it worthwhile to search for it, or would that be futile? I studied the chart and checked the tides for the date and time it had floated away. My heart sank when I saw that the tide had been ebbing strongly. With a despondent finger, I traced the line of the outgoing current. My glass ball had an unimpeded passage straight out to sea.
It was a lesson in letting go, although I didn’t have a choice. In a half-hearted way, I hoped that whoever found my glass ball would whoop with joy as I had done and set it in pride of place on their shelf. In a secret way, I hoped that the ball was lodged nearby, in a swirling back-eddy of seaweed perhaps, and—in the ultimate too-good-to-be-true scenario—that I would see it from my kayak one day as I guided tourists around the harbour. This shred of optimism, I later learned, is what keeps glass ball collectors searching, day after stormy day. Even though I knew it was silly, I struggled to fully accept the loss. But my losses were not over. In the graph of life lessons, Possession and Loss zigzag across my timeline in giant steps.
The following winter, my place of work took delivery of an order of puppets. Some of them were furry animals, but the finger puppets that caught my eye were the funny little witches, with fuzzy hair, squinty eyes and red-and-black striped stockings. Since I was at a loss for gifts to send home, I thought that maybe my three sisters would get a laugh out of these toil-and-trouble puppets, just as I had done.
On a Friday afternoon at the post office I filled out the airmail forms, ticked the box that said “gift” and giggled out loud when I noted the contents: witches—3. This was at a time when there were still heated battles over the fate of Clayoquot Sound, and for some old-timers, the surging wave of Earth warriors, hippie activists and non-violent Wiccan eco-feminists was a source of great distress. So I wasn’t the only one who took note of the word “witches” written on my form. The post-mistress also noticed—narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips. Funnily enough, this later turned out to be useful. I spent the weekend writing last-minute Christmas cards and returned to the post office on a Monday to send them. That was when the post-mistress took me aside and, with an air of great importance and conspiracy, whispered loudly that my parcel had been stolen. The story unfolded behind the back of her hand, for all to hear. The post office had been broken into over the weekend. The thieves made off with dozens of packages, but the job had been botched and the theft was discovered early. In a panic, the thieves ran down Neill Street, through a little-known trail to a rocky bay, spilling parcels as they went. By flashlight, they ripped open the parcels, seeking anything of value. They took what they could before red and blue lights began flashing and they stashed the rest of the booty, planning to return when the coast was clear. Their trail was too obvious and their route was discovered, along with part of their stash. But the thieves were landlubbers and had not taken into account the rising tide. My parcel, “the one with the witches,” the post-mistress hissed in a significant voice, had floated away on the tide.
For most people, this problem would be easily surmountable. But in my family, I am the person who is always late; I am the “dog-ate-my-homework” sibling. With the witches safely mailed, this was going to be one of the first Christmases ever that my presents stood a chance of arriving on time. Now broke and out of gift ideas, I called home, my heart sinking. No one said they didn’t believe me, but I had to wonder. Given my track record, would I have believed me?
Over the next few days, I chewed my nails and wondered what presents I could think up now. Tofino in those days was not a shopping Mecca. But as I was walking past the post office a few days later, the post-mistress rushed out to flag me down. Bouffant and beaming, she led me into the back of the building and there on the floor in a cardboard box were my witches. Two of them still had parts of the packaging attached. All of them were soaking wet—a tangle of eelgrass and hemlock needles, with a bit of sand thrown in.
“They washed up at Clayoquot Island,” she gushed. “The caretakers found them this morning. They knew about the theft, so they brought them back. I didn’t realize your witches were puppets!” she added. “They’re really quite cute.”
“But they can obviously do spells,” I said, the width of her smile diminishing. “They wouldn’t have survived otherwise, would they?”
I took the witches home and washed them, but they’d now taken on a battered appearance and I was never able to rid their fuzzy hair of hemlock needles. I dried them out over the woodstove, rewrapped and repackaged them, and sent them airmail to England. By some miracle, they arrived in time for Christmas. Two of them still sit on a London shelf, proof that what the sea takes is sometimes returned, with a story included.
The incident with the witches refreshed the idea of finding my glass float. I felt so sure that it was nearby. I didn’t go out of my way to seek it, but I had faith in the mysterious repeating patterns of the universe. I scanned the shoreline wherever I went, always watching for that particular shape and colour. Several years later, my new partner, Marcel, found a glass ball similar to mine. I was happy to share his moment of triumph and knew how it felt. And the house felt better with his treasure in place. Sometimes, though, looking at his glass ball only reminded me of my own. Then in 2012, when our daughter was about seven years old, Marcel and I were coming back from signing tax returns in Ucluelet one March day when we decided to go for a good long walk on the beach. It was blowing southeast, gale force. I was in despair at the amount of tax owing, combined with the accountant’s bill. When I saw debris scattered all over the beach, I said to Marcel, “Maybe I’ll find a glass ball and that will make me feel better.”
We walked for an hour in one direction, the rain driving into our faces and penetrating our supposed-to-be-waterproof raingear. There were several large black plastic floats on the beach, but no signs of glass balls: no Japanese light bulbs, no objects adorned with pelagic gooseneck barnacles, nothing to indicate that this would be a fruitful walk. We admired the shorebirds taking refuge from the storm, especially the elegant black-bellied plovers. We commented on how sodden we were as we turned around and began the hour-long walk back. And that was when I saw a spherical object that was not black, but green.
“Look there!” I said. “What’s that?”
Marcel pulled out his binoculars and peered into the distance.
“It’s a huge great glass ball, is what it is!” he yelled.
Gumboots, raingear and all, we ran, speeding up and panting with the effort as we saw two other walkers heading that way. The walkers apparently didn’t know about glass balls, because they looked at us oddly and gave us a wide berth. But our run was worthwhile, because perched on the foam from a receding wave was a beach-ball-sized float. My household had grown to a family of three and the size of our find seemed to have grown along with us. The float’s southern hemisphere was thickly clothed in green algae, but from its equator northward it gleamed of turquoise glass. Against the smoothness of glass were three lumpy Japanese “double F” insignias, trademarks of the Hokuyu Glass Company. These stamped insignias allowed us to pinpoint the float’s origins, but they also increased the rarity of the find.
After this, I discovered just how fierce a competition I was up against. From out of the woodwork, people came up to me and asked about my glass ball. They wanted to know about the double F stamps; they wanted to know where I’d found it, what the weather had been doing that day—and the tide. In a subtle way, some people wanted to see if I understood or properly appreciated the value of my find. And then there were those who needed me to know that such a find was technically not something I deserved. These people had been combing the beaches every day before work, often going out in storms at four in the morning. The soles of their boots were caked with a winter’s worth of sand, packed in tight, the accumulation of grains symbolic of their investment in the flotsam lottery. The more you have, the greater your chances? Not in this case. In this case, my presence on the beach in a storm was entirely random and the idea of looking for a glass ball was just as spontaneous. The fact that I’d happened to be in exactly the right place when the waves delivered their prize was pure chance. And for some people, this rankled. I was surprised to discover just how extensive this group of dedicated seekers was. In Tofino they communicate by text message, so that their early morning paths don’t collide. They share information and keep secrets. They thirst for the sight of green glass on sand. They don’t complain about the weather, or lack of sleep. Nor do young children slow them down. Infants and toddlers are strapped into backpacks, rain guards cinched tight, to join in the search. To say they are obsessed is close to the mark.
I was not obsessed about my lost float, but I had the restless feeling that I simply hadn’t looked for it hard enough. I remember my father losing the car keys after a long workday in the Tobago bush. We returned to a locked car in blistering heat, miles from anywhere. I remember my brother and I edging into the deep green shade of a breadfruit tree as the bloody hells and Jesus Christs morphed into other words—words we weren’t supposed to know, or hear. My father’s face, already flushed from the heat, grew a deep shade of red and a perimeter of random objects grew around him, as he pelted them at the ground. When he threw his hat, the only thing left to throw, the keys tumbled from the top of his head. Their transition from invisible to visible made a big impression on me, so slight was the line between the two.
The new glass ball was not my little green float made visible. It was something else entirely. Finding it with Marcel meant that it belonged to us. In this way it mirrored the changes in my life—my expansion from individual to partner, and mother. Three stamps for our family of three. If the universe were sending me a message, the message seemed to be about living in the moment and appreciating what I had. I decided I should embrace the tale of the original float’s loss and stamp it into my life story like a double F insignia. Surely, the story was as good as the object—perhaps better? And then I could just let it go…
This was when a new line arced across my graph of Possession and Loss.
Like the green Subaru owners that I began to notice and wave to once I owned a green Subaru myself, there was a group of people I was about to become affiliated with. Among this group were people who wanted something they couldn’t have, struggled through their desires and made peace with their inability to achieve them. One friend finally came to terms with the idea that she might go through life childless. Two years later, she was married and had a child. Another friend finally gave up hoping she would ever have her writing published, changed professions, and the next year had a book on the shelves. There are more humble versions of this story, too. The gardener who nurtured a sickly plant for years, only to have a seedling spring up and flourish after the plant had died.
I didn’t join this group until one June day in 2014. By then we had moved, mooring our home near Strawberry Island in the Tofino Harbour—the site of my first floathouse experience. Much had changed. Tofino was busier than ever. I yearned for the quiet calm of Maltby Slough and pined for my wild home. The house was rocked by continuous boat wakes and my ears rang with the roar of boats and planes. I lost faith in my ability to adapt and had to remind myself why we’d done so. The limits of an isolated floathouse were not healthy for everyone, especially not for a child so attracted to other children she’d once begun crawling across a road at the sight of them. But as winter came, the noise died down, whales and seals continued swimming past our moorage and even the short boat ride brought a connection to the water that helped me survive. Much of our view was spectacular—the mountains, glaciers and sandy beaches we couldn’t see from Maltby Slough. And there were ways to keep a connection with wild places. We took to the rowboat, landing like castaways on unpeopled beaches.
On the day in question, I was in the rowboat with my daughter, going to visit friends on an island in the harbour. The day was sunny, the water was calm and the current was racing like a river along its prescribed path, peeling away from itself in whirlpool after whirlpool. Catching the current, we zoomed downstream, passing a number of spiralling back eddies. Foam and bubbles gathered at the centre of each eddy, indicating the power and energy of the tide. But one bubble, in one back eddy, was not white; it was green. In the space of time it took me to register that it could be a glass ball, the rowboat had been whisked far downstream. I heaved us around and brandished the oars at top speed, moving like a paddle wheeler against the current. I told my daughter that there was a funny-looking bubble I wanted to check out. I told myself that the bubble was a light bulb, a bottle, or truly just a bubble. Glass balls were never found in the harbour and they were seldom found floating. And it was June—long past glass ball season. My daughter, however, knew me well.
“Is it a glass ball?” she breathed.
“It could be,” I admitted, digging in and yarding on the oars.
At that, she transformed into a nine-year-old charioteer: “Over there!” she shouted, “Faster, faster! I can see it! It’s green! It’s round!”
“It might be a light bulb,” I panted as we crossed the eddy line, our hull spinning as the counter-current took hold of us. I drew in the oars, knelt and grasped a canoe paddle, reaching into the swirling nucleus of the current to pull us close to the round, green shape. The eddy swung us even closer until I could reach through the creamy bubbles and pull out a small glass float, just like the one I’d lost ten or more years before, though the chances of it being the same one were almost nil. I held it up for Toby to see, both of us giddy with elation. And as the sun glinted from the bright water, my focus drifted from her laughing face to the long, high pier of Stone Island, visible behind her, barely a kilometre away. The tide was racing past Stone Island, racing toward us as if making up for lost time.
I looked again at the glass ball in my hand. Moving back to the harbour had brought me full circle in more ways than one.