Salt Marsh Geomorphology Part 2

I headed out early for a quick trip through the marsh. Being a Labor Day weekend, anything but an early start would put me in the midst of the motorboat Rock 'em Sock 'em Robot festivities. The weather was excellent, and with a falling tide I had to keep moving if I was to get through the marsh.

I made the down stream trip to the top of the marsh in under ten minutes - it turns out to be 60 ft. short of a mile, so yes, I had some current behind me.

I head in for a clockwise rounding of the marsh. The birds are more a constant than overwhelmingly numerous. The tide is already well down, so the 1-1/4 mile diameter marsh now has twenty-some miles of exposed feedable mud, so the shore birds should be well dispersed in a lot of places where I won't see them. But, there are always a few Yellow-Legs, Egrets, or Night Herons to be seen.

Near my secret short cut I find a long piece of old rubber. It's eroding out of the bank about 2 ft. down. Old rubber, from my experience, has a creepy gelatinous almost anatomical feel to it. I found a model-T tire once. With all of the cord rotted away, it was soft and kind of gooey in a way that more modern rubber doesn't get. That's my dating process for this piece of found rubber. It's hard to say what it originally was - probably a tire, maybe a hose.

The sun is still low and although it I didn't actually get here early enough, there is nothing better than a marsh waking up. It is cool with long shadows and the wildlife is about as calm as I am, if for no other reason than it is too early for anyone else. 

Near the top of the shortcut into Nell's Channel, I find a bottle poking out of the cut bank...more data. Although the bottle was buried in one piece, weather or weight of the marsh has broken it into three pieces. I am able to reach back  into the mold and get the base. Later I'll identify it as a Foster-Forbes made beer bottle from 1972. It was 20 inches down from the surface.

1972 Forbes and Ford bottle

It occurs to me that I've managed to switch on my "seeing mode," that place where I focus on details that ordinarily sneak by.

The hard to read FF logo of Forbes and Ford

I head up Nell's Channel following the river-right side. There are some tiny biting bugs, no-seeum size. I find another bottle eroding from a cut bank, about 15 inches from the top. It's 19 degrees magnetic (forgot my good compass) to the Milford coal stack. It's double handled with Penick and Ford Ltd printed on the bottom. Later, I identify it. Penick and Ford made maple syrup. The makers mark is the Owens-Illinois  "diamond-I", which dates it to 1941-1955.

I head back out and upriver against a current that is dropping off as the low tide approaches.