Once upon a time, a soft drink bottle nestled comfortably on the grocery shelf with its littermates, yoked at the neck with plastic rings, clean and shining with pride at the delicious contents inside.

Some of its colleagues had good treatment. Their contents were consumed, and the bottles found their way through recycling back to a manufacturer for reincarnation.

But for a significant and sorry large portion of these bottles, they found themselves forever buried under tons of reeking garbage, or even worse, tossed out a car window into a ditch.

Such a lonely bottle is pictured here. It has made its way down a ditch, aided by spring rains, and into a local waterway. Today, it nestles at the marsh’s edge. Tomorrow, it may be carried by tides into the rivers and bays of Tidewater Virginia, and then downstream into the Atlantic Ocean.

Sadly, it may be doomed to float on its own forever. A propeller may gash it, and it could sink, trapping small crabs and fish that grow too...