Mt. Nusatsum

Mt. Nusatsum

Friday, October 29, 2010

Flotsam but no Jetsam

Walking along the banks of the Bella Coola River anywhere downstream of the 'habitation' line in the watershed, roughly Stuie BC on the Atnarko River -- you are likely to run into 'stuff' that is other than logs, gravel and rock.  It's stuff that belongs to someone and all you can really tell is that it belongs to someone up river from where you are.  So far I've seen a nice little drift boat upside down on a gravel bar island, a canoe in a side channel and many smaller objects that each must carry a story.

I did learn from Wikipedia that there is technically a difference between Flotsam and Jetsam:
  • Flotsam describes goods that are floating on the water without having been thrown in deliberately, often after a shipwreck, while
  • Jetsam has been voluntarily cast into the sea jettisoned by the crew of a ship, usually in order to lighten it in an emergency.
A homemade gillnet marking light?
 I'm pretty sure few of us took the opportunity to jettison unwanted stuff during the flood so I'm calling everything I see officially beached "Flotsam".  It certainly did feel like a "shipwreck" around these parts the Sunday morning September 26, 2010 after the Great Flood of 2010.

While some of the 'stuff' right now might be just plain garbage, some will slowly be retrieved and get back to it's owner if it's any good, but some I hope just stays where it's at.  It will all be fascinating contributions to the archaeological record in the future when someone finds an interesting item like the one on the left and it's called an artifact.

We've had a couple more pretty acceptable days of weather in the Bella Coola Valley. It's feeling more like snow weather all the time, the temperatures aren't climbing as much during the day and the morning temperatures cooler.  Light precipation over night shows up as fresh snow on the mountains. Grizzly

Flotsam - Highway 20 morning of Sep 26, 2010

1 comment:

  1. Grizzly - Congratulations on 1 Year! I enjoy reading your blog almost every day. If I miss a day or two, I have that much more to look forward to. You are to be commended on your diligence and the quality of your content. I find this blog far more interesting than CNN. Keep up the great work! Steve

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