Stephen Kirkland, executive director of Nauticus, said the museum reached out to Living Lands & Waters about a year ago when the staff heard of the traveling exhibit. The man also accurately described the location where it was found, which hadn’t been mentioned in the story. It was titled “Lavender For You.” After a national newspaper did a story on it several years ago, a man called to say he’d written it for a girlfriend who broke his heart. “I thought that was kind of cool because it’s just so random,” he said.Īnother was a piece of guitar sheet music found in a 40-ounce Budweiser bottle where the Wabash River meets the Ohio. One is a glass jar that contains a presidential portrait of President Bill Clinton. Pregracke has a couple favorites from over the years. Some bottles travel hundreds of miles from their origin, traversing creeks to end up in a major river. He’s also tried investigating the occasional treasure map, to no avail. Pregracke has occasionally been able to connect with the people who wrote them. Others include contact information and addresses. In some cases, they weren’t necessarily meant to be found, with the author writing to a higher power. When one is found, the crew takes it back to the barge and opens it to reveal the message. “If you find a message in a bottle you’re kind of a king or queen,” he said. But “the top of the pyramid,” the apex, he said, is a message in a bottle. Volunteers come across all sorts of things - bowling balls, kitchen appliances. Pregracke now spends stretches of time on a barge used to clean the Mississippi and other rivers, along with towboats, workboats and cranes. “I thought people would care and want to see it cleaned up. “I wanted to do something about it because it bothered me,” he said.
He was in the water all the time, diving for mussel shells, among other activities, and constantly came across garbage. The traveling exhibit is in partnership with Living Lands & Waters, an Illinois-based nonprofit that has conducted about 1,400 major river cleanups in 21 states since launching in the late 1990s.įounder Chad Pregracke said he started the organization after growing up near the Mississippi River.
Nauticus in downtown Norfolk recently launched the “Message in a Bottle” exhibition. One environmental organization has come across dozens of them while cleaning up America’s rivers: everything from treasure maps to loneliness-fueled pleas to the universe, stuffed inside glass bottles or even Gatorade containers.Ĭurious what’s inside? Now’s your chance to find out. When you hear of a message in a bottle, perhaps the term calls to mind faraway images of someone stranded on a remote island or penning love letters centuries ago.īut they turn up more often - and closer - than you might think.
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