Buffington’s exploits are particularly impressive given that he’s the default parent of two young kids and lives in a landlocked state. He is forty-one and has a master’s degree in English literature; for some years, he did technical writing for a nuclear-waste-removal company. As his LinkedIn profile notes, he is also a musician, playing “guitar, harmonica, and mandolin across genres.” Basically, he’s an earnest and chipper guy, given to recording himself yearningly singing Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away,” and to crunching on apples while saying things like “Cool beans!” He is quick to make a friend, and maintains relationships with dozens of people whose bottles he’s retrieved. He once found a bottle with a note and an eight-year-old piece of wedding cake inside and traced it back to Ed and Carol Meyers, a Virginia couple who were celebrating their first anniversary. Buffington himself got married several years later and wrote on Instagram, “So, naturally, Ed & Carol came to our wedding & it felt like a blessing.”
She describes his office:
Buffington’s home office recalls a museum exhibition on Mesopotamian material culture crossed with a frat house the morning after a blowout party. There are empty bottles everywhere—crammed onto shelves, catching the light on a windowsill. A bar cart overflows with bottles that Buffington has yet to open, or “solve,” as he likes to say. “I would describe this place as a chaotic nightmare,” Buffington told me cheerfully. He keeps the tools of his trade in a garage workshop that he calls the Lab: a spray bottle (for hydrating flaking paper), a U.V. black light (for reading faded lettering), Channellock pliers (for wrenching off aluminum caps), a rotary tool with a diamond drill bit (for slicing into recalcitrant ones), laparoscopic needle drivers (for removing messages without the risk of shattering or breakage). Buffington’s wife, a surgeon, suggested the last tool after watching him struggle with bamboo skewers and bits of tape. A lone aluminum can among the bottles contained the dregs of a Bell’s Two Hearted I.P.A.
The piece really takes off when Buffington invites Collins to join him on a bottle-searching mission on the remote Bahamian island of Mayaguana. She says,
Buffington warned that Mayaguana would be no Margaritaville. “We are not talking about a ‘stroll’ here,” he wrote. “A typical day of hunting involves hiking maybe 8-15 miles on a beach: soft sand sucking energy from every footstep; relentless sun hammering you on exposed, shadeless shores.” He recommended that I come equipped with trekking poles, fingerless sun gloves, a multipurpose tool that included “pliers and a knife at minimum,” and “one 3-liter water reservoir with hose.” He also suggested packing provisions, including canned chicken, for “suitcase burritos,” and powdered Pedialyte.
Collins’ account of the bottle search is excellent. Here’s a sample:
After an hour of brain-joggling transit, we made it to the beach—something out of a shipwreck novel, devoid of any trace of human presence. Dropped onshore, Buffington and I walked and walked some more. There was no cell service, and Brown would be out of walkie-talkie range until we approached the pickup spot. For most of history, an island was a place of real isolation. Now a message could reach you practically anywhere—you had to find an island within an island to get off the grid. The experience of being totally incommunicado was liberating, but I also felt a sense of dread: What if I got heatstroke, or broke an ankle? Or, worse, what if Buffington did?
They find a number of bottles that appear to contain messages. But there’s nothing of any significance. Collins flies home. Buffington stays behind and continues his search. He finds a promising-looking bottle – the one described in the photo caption. Collins writes,
A couple of weeks later, Buffington held the bottle close to his computer camera, turning it slowly for me to admire. He pointed out that whoever had written it had sealed the scroll with a Band-Aid. “The really exciting thing is you can see writing in there,” Buffington said. He was right. Even at a distance, I could make out at least one full sentence, written in what looked like Sharpie: “Thanks for finding me.”
The piece moves into its final stage – tracking down the author of the bottle-message. Buffington succeeds in doing so. The author’s name is Joyce VanGilder. She’d written it six years ago, in 2020, during the pandemic, on the shore of North Carolina, not far from Frying Pan Lighthouse, which is mentioned in the message. Collins talks with her:
Confronted with her handiwork six years later, after a journey that likely took it into the Gulf Stream and around the entire clockwise circuit of the North Atlantic—a trip of several thousand punishing miles—VanGilder seemed more concerned about the bottle than about the message. “I feel like an international litterbug,” she admitted. Buffington had shown her a photograph of the site where the bottle was found. “When I saw all the stuff that was sitting around where he picked it up, I was, like, ‘Man, I guess I need to get down there and clean up some trash,’ ” she said.
The piece ends poignantly. Collins makes a personal connection:
VanGilder had sent the bottle with casual intentions, but I was oddly moved by receiving it. I grew up in Wilmington, not far from the Frying Pan, and, in 1988, my father had a bad accident on Bald Head, the nearest point of land. As I read about the tower, the names of local TV affiliates and the daily newspaper from my childhood kept cropping up. For almost a decade, I’d been writing a book about Wilmington. Physically, I was in France, but my head was in my home town. Somehow, it seemed, it had written me back.
Collins’ piece unfolds magnificently. Highly recommended.
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