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CAST ADRIFT

When driftwood lands on our shore, it comes to rest on our beach, water worn and sun-bleached from the wash of tides and currents.

It was wrenched from another lifetime in another land, and during its months afloat, it was probably a raft for wingweary birds, a shelter for fish, and a taxi for barnacles and bacteria. This stormtossed treasure is also a resource for our gardens and our creativity. Driftwood is both useful and beautiful. In my own garden, I’ve woven driftwood sticks into a plant support frame. My garden edges are sea-tossed twigs twisted together.

Our east coast beach doesn’t deliver tide-loads of driftwood like the wild west coast, but the sea here washes up sculptural branches for artworks, graceful sticks for screens, or the occasional log for garden edges. Some driftwood is solid enough to sit; others, delicate enough to weave with. It can be tied together to make fences, nailed to make garden gates and furniture, heeled in to create garden arches, or hung as mobiles and garden art.

Not all wood that washes up is shapely or sculptural. Sometimes it is flat timber ready to be recycled. Fencing planks, bits of buildings, pieces of shipping pallets, and boat or dinghy wreckage may not be as appealing to look at, but in our local gardens they become signs for writing on, seats for sitting on, planks for plants, or bases for compost heaps.

Driftwood also provides the fuel and the furniture for beach campfires. As any beachcomber will know though, repeatedly burning driftwood in a fireplace with a metal grate will rust the grate out really quickly because of all the accumulated salts. Those same salts can create exceptional flame colours and I still remember a sustained teal blue burn from a beach fire log a few years ago.

Most of our driftwood is likely to have come from close to home. Flooding and strong winds clear out deadwood or uproot whole trees from beside rivers, washing them out to sea and returning them to a nearby beach a few tides later.

Any driftwood left untouched by foragers become embedded in the beach environment.

It begins a new life trapping twigs, sand, shells and seaweed that is blown or washed up against it. The driftwood slowly embeds itself into the shore, shaping or stabilising sand dunes and has long been used as an easy and effective erosion control.

In the process, it creates its own ecology. Here, dotterels and oyster catchers nest in the sheltered hollows created on the leeward side of beach logs. Kingfishers, terns and seagulls use them as vantage points and perches, huddle behind them or peck beneath them for food.

As the driftwood starts to decay, other ecosystems are born. The dark and damp under-log conditions are perfect for sandhoppers, centipedes, earwigs, spiders (including our native katipo¯ ), and even smaller micro-organisms – and these in turn become food for shore birds. And if driftwood logs come to rest in the estuary, fish, barnacles and worms find a home there making them magnets for herons, pied stilts, shags and kingfishers hunting for food.

Driftwood that stays on the beach also become a haven for young shore plants.

It provides more stable, moist and sheltered conditions than the surrounding arid sand-scape, so spinifex gets snagged, pi¯ngao and carex take root, and even po¯ hutukawa seeds sprout in this organic seedbed.

But all cycles live within their greater cycles. Another big flood, or storm or king tide can dislodge settled driftwood and wash it back out to sea for its next adventure. Our local driftwood adaptations and creations return to the ocean currents to get seeped in more stories.

In Nordic mythology, the first two humans were made from two pieces of driftwood, ash and elm, by the god Odin and his brothers. Shaped by this foundational story, the Vikings apparently cast wood into the sea before making landfall – where it landed indicated where they should build their mead halls or meeting houses.

I’m not sure how that translates to 21st century priorities, but maybe we should paying closer attention to the next piece of wood that drifts into the bay here. ✤

FD92ɁN8EN L9ɀKOPM

en-nz

2021-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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