You’re alone, walking along the shoreline and enjoying the sunshine and the warm sand between your toes, when suddenly you see it: a bottle with a piece of paper in it, lying on the sparkling beach. You open the cork and read the contents and there it is… a message for the ages… words of wisdom that promise to give your mundane world new meaning and passion… or perhaps a connection to another kindred soul on the planet. Ah… if only it would happen like this.
If such life-changing messages are to be found, they’re not lying there on a sunny shore, waiting to be chanced upon. There’s a price to be paid for their discovery. More likely, they’re to be found on a rainy day among plastic bottles and broken lobster traps in a heap of storm debris.
They may be enmeshed in a mass of wet seaweed, recently thrown up on the shore by crashing waves. It may be winter when the sky is grey and oppressive, and you’d much rather be indoors than outside with the cold wind biting at your face and fingers.
If the message carried within the bottle is truly magnificent, you can bet the glass vessel is lying close to the edge of the water, destined to be pulled out to sea again if you don’t act quickly enough to pick it up.
Anyone who has ever valued wisdom or soulful connections with others knows that these are treasures you have to find for yourself. Neither can be passed from one person to the next. Likewise, the person who finds the bottle on the shore is the one destined to acquire its contents.
‘I always believed the sea could bring surprises and joy.’ So said Hsiao Wei-chen of Taiwan, who recently found a message in a bottle thrown into the sea 3,000 nautical miles away by container ship seaman Oliver Hickman. His note wished the finder health and happiness and also said the world is full of fun, love and beauty. Apparently, Hickman makes it a regular practice to throw bottled messages into the sea. For more on the story, see Times Live.
The world is indeed full of fun, love and beauty. It’s also full of wonder. You just have to get out there and discover it for yourself.
Flandrum Hill 
You mean we’re really not going to be walking along the beach and find a message in a bottle which inspires our imagination and causes us to write a famous novel?? Seriously, I really liked this post, Amy. And, as you summed it up, the world is really full of wonder. If we just open our eyes and look around.
You know, you kind of threw a bottle into the sea of cyberspace and we’re opening this magic message on our computers all over the world.
Kathy, the world is absolutely full of wonder. It’s there for the seeking each and every day, but once in a blue moon, you might be lucky to just trip upon it while strolling on the beach in Taiwan 🙂
I think of every family treasure tucked away in an attic as a sort of note in a bottle. The person who folded it away will never know if it will be unfolded. The person who does the unfolding may never fully understand why it was precious.
Nice post, Amy!
Gerry, you’ve added yet another dimension of thought to this post. I love the idea of folding and unfolding.
[…] P.S. I have just visited the WordPress blog at Flandrum Hill and by the strangest of co-incidences Amy Lynn has posted an article about messages in bottles on the beach – you might want to pop over and look at her excellent article about The message in a bottle. […]
Jessica, thanks for connecting our posts 🙂
There are lovely ‘messages in bottles’ for us to discover all over if we slow down and watch for them. Discovering the simple joys of life – and appreciating them – is one of the bestest gifts of growing older and being sober.
Yes Cindy, the messages are everywhere. Some have been waiting patiently around at our feet for decades.
Messages are everywhere. Thank you for the reminder. Really enjoyed this post and the photos used to inspire the words and visa versa.
Thanks Scott 🙂
What a lovely post, Amy, – and photos, as always.
My husband, – who has been a fisherman on the high seas for several decades now, also used to put messages in bottles and throw them overboard now and then. He has got some replies over the years, but only from European countries 🙂
Eldrid, what an interesting husband you have 🙂 Thanks so much for adding his story. It gives hope to those who are still wondering if they’ll ever find a message in a bottle on the shore.
Amy Lynn — how exciting that would be to find a message in a bottle from some far off exotic land. Like Halifax !
You always get me thinking.
Blog on !
Ha ha Sybil 🙂 Yes, Halifax is VERY exotic… especially around the waters of Eastern Passage 😉
Amy-Lynn, as soon as my hostess is up and ready, I will be strolling the beach here on St. George Island on the Gulf of Mexico, and I’ll be thinking of you and messages in bottles and gifts from the sea. I wonder if there is a tidal current that might bring something from Nova Scotia down to the Florida panhandle. If so, it would certainly be a circuitous route, but a straight line is seldom the most interesting path to travel. Lifting my coffee cup to you in a morning salute–.
Beautifully said, pj…your words captured my imagination.
I agree Cindy. Pamela does have a way with words 🙂
We have a George’s Island in Halifax Harbour. There are tales of pirate treasure buried there. St. George Island off Florida’s coast is likely a warm and beautiful treasure in itself.
the world of imagination……..hmmm good,,,,,,wel i appreciate the idea of message in bottle….the mystical,adventurous Message…….
Taal, messages in bottles certainly seem to spark the imagination, allowing our hearts and minds to travel to worlds beyond our own.
[…] on the beach, are your eyes scanning the shore for a special shell, a heart shaped stone or a bottle with a message in it, or are you gazing at the horizon […]