Jeffrey Trubisz was walking along Lake Champlain in South Burlington on Green Up Day when a white buoy on the shoreline caught his eye. A plastic liquor bottle was wedged beside it, and through the transparent plastic, Trubisz could make out a message dated May 26, 2014.
“Help!” it read. “Broke leg, Spiltrock. Send help and bring more wiskey.” It was initialed either “NJR” or “NTR.”
The misspelled Split Rock, Trubisz surmised, refers to the mountain on the west side of the lake in Essex, N.Y.
“That was a pretty long distance,” Trubisz said. “Of course, it had 12 years to travel.”
The misspelling of whiskey, he believes, was the work of “some wit who was quite sober and just wanted to make a joke.”
“Certainly the handwriting didn’t look very drunken,” Trubisz said. “But I took the date to be real.”
Trubisz would love some answers about its origin, though he doesn’t intend to reply with a floating message of his own. He’s been studying shamanism for the past decade, and in that practice, “there are no coincidences,” he said.
“We attract whatever comes to us. Is there a lesson to give or an observation to be made or a gift to give?” Trubisz said. “So right now, I’m really thinking about synchronicity and waiting for other messages. And they may or may not come, but I’ve kind of incorporated that into my worldview.”
More simply, Trubisz said he feels “gratitude” that one message — in a bottle, no less — has already been delivered.
“I had a great experience that made me laugh,” he said, “and I feel special, in a way, because not everyone finds a message in a bottle.”
This article appears in May 13 • 2026.
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