San Diego driftwood (in the 1940s)

The driftwood here is not what it would be if this were a timbered country. We have trees around here now, to be sure, but at sometime or other most of them have been planted. This land originally was what could be called a desert country, a desert between our coastline and the nearest mountains, the Lagunas…. In my fires I have burned nothing but driftwood. Yet driftwood appears to have seasons too, the same as anything else in the ocean…. Some of the shapes, to be sure, have the appearance of already having undergone every conceivable torture. Their sinews have been twisted with rusty nails, pieces of their frames have been wrenched off, some come bound and helpless in the thongs of sea-grass and crowns of sharp barnacles have been thrust upon them.

From The Town with the Funny Name, by Max Miller (1948).