Plate No. 04. The Buoy Tree at Otter Rock, Oregon — community-hung fishing buoys on a roadside spruce, late-day light.
Vol 04 · Plate 03
BUOY TREE
A famous tree in Otter Rock, photographed before it started to fall over.
$75.00
Standard 16 × 24 (vertical) · Archival photo paper · Signed
Locals know the Buoy Tree. It's a roadside spruce at Otter Rock that the owner has collected buoys from decades of beachcombing. Some are faded, some are new, some are painted by hand. I have driven past it a thousand times. This is the only time the light was right.
The tree is starting to fall over. There are so many buoys on it now that the weight has pulled it sideways, and last time I drove by, parts of it didn't look like a tree at all anymore — just an obscure shape of color hung in the branches behind it.
This photograph is from a few years ago, when the buoys still felt like decoration instead of mass. The light hit them at the angle that makes their colors pop — the reds and yellows and the oxidized greens — and for about ten minutes the whole tree looked like a piece of folk art.
The Buoy Tree is one of those things on the Oregon Coast that is community-built and quietly disappearing.
"Decades of buoys, hung by one person I have never met, lit for ten minutes."
Folk art on a tree, before the tree gave up.
The Frame
Location
Otter Rock, Oregon
Coordinates
44°45′N · 124°04′W
Conditions
Late-day directional light
Status
First public release · Tree has since deteriorated significantly
