Washington State’s Ultimate Beachcomber

by The Editors on May 16, 2022

Hakai Magazine brings the story of John Anderson of Forks, Washington and his North American Beachcombing Museum. It’s a huge collection of the stuff we all see on the beach but usually don’t want to carry home.

Housed in what was once Anderson’s plumbing workshop, the collection typifies humanity’s peculiar relationship with stuff—from the age of organic pollution to the age of plastic pollution. . . There is beauty to be found in the handwritten letters stuffed into glass bottles, in the Japanese glass fishing floats, and in the wavy lines of the ancient fossilized mollusks. There is a ghoulishness too: a candy-colored collection of plastic doll heads; hard hats that once sat on the heads of unknown laborers; the encrusted bristles of the most personal of items—toothbrushes. John’s Beachcombing Museum has it all.

For all the details on how you can visit the museum next time you’re driving the 101 on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, click the link.

[Link: Hakai Magazine vis Boing Boing]

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