Right you are.
I collected a red spar five years ago, and it's still on my shoreline now. I had thought about using it as you suggest (landscape timber) when it dried out, but two of us can't lift it today -- even to cut it up for the woodstove.
The wood spars didn't fare well in night-time/GPS collisions, I guess.
PVC pipe is cheap -- and doesn't scratch the graphics.
UPDATE!
1) Two wood items were found: a 2x4x5' lumber, and a soggy (and very heavy) piece of
oak. It had been cut, diagonally, but mostly
lengthwise with a chainsaw. After puzzling over it a while, I realized it was the scrap created when "sharpening" a piling to be driven into the lake bottom.
2) I didn't risk recovering all the
Styrofoam objects sailing/flipping by in yesterday afternoon's strong winds, but did rescue a rather expensive -- and large --
mooring buoy.
Describe it, and I'll deliver it personally to you.
(Otherwise, I'll just add it to my collec-- er, crawl space storage area).
What to do about
The Tree?
I don't know what to do. Until that monster floe
melts, there's no hope. If the wind changes,
The Tree will be "out there" -- somewhere.