Surfers call it: “Going-over-the-falls” because the sensation is akin to those nuts who sometimes hurl over Niagra in wooden or metal barrels. I fell with the lip until I impacted at the bottom; it felt like a belly-flop off a twenty-foot cliff. Then…I plunged. The lip walloped down on me with all the weight of a dumped load of felled lumber from a logging truck. It did not feel good.
Surfers have an expression: “Only a surfer knows the feeling.” What they’re referencing is the utter stoke one gets from riding a wave. What no surfer can effectively relate, is what it’s like to get “rag-dolled” underwater by a big wave. Only a surfer who’s been through it, knows that feeling as well. It’s not fun. Few other experiences in life more clearly illustrate the relative powerlessness of human beings when matched against the power and fury of nature’s forces. Maybe an ant under the rushing force of a kitchen faucet, or a spider swirling down a toilet drain can relate, but imagine being clutched by a huge fist, and shaken, all your limbs torquing in contrary attitudes, then tossed haphazardly as if you were the die tumbling across the table in a Vegas craps game, swirled and hurled and twirled until you had no idea which was up, which was down, dark green water, and darker shadows passing before your vision, until the shadows overpower the green, and only the dark remains, and you keep tumbling, head over heels over head over heels over…
I’d been slammed under by big surf before. Once you realize you’re not going to die, it’s not so bad. You just try to relax and hold your breath…flow with it. Eventually the force subsides, releases, and you drift up to the surface; sometimes it’s almost a rush to feel that power. But this was different. It wasn’t stopping. This wave kept tumbling me, kept pushing me under, pushing me up, then sucking me under again. I worried about hitting bottom; it’s all rocks and boulders at Fox Hill. What if I hit my head and was knocked unconscious? I tried to cover my skull with my forearms but the force kept wrenching my arms in different directions.
What I didn’t realize until after was that I was getting dragged underwater, along the length of the point! When the wave wouldn’t let go, I started to fight…kick and claw, even though I knew this would hasten the depletion of my oxygen. But I couldn’t just let it keep tumbling me!
Fighting was futile. When you’re in the grips of such a primal source of Nature’s power, there is no fighting. I relaxed and flowed with it again; tried to conserve my air.
Eventually, the force did start to diminish but I had the weird sense of neutral buoyancy. The water was so agitated that I was neither sinking or rising as I usually do with the aid of my wetsuit which is a natural flotation device. I started to swim for the surface. Only as I swam, instead of a growing light as I approached the surface, it all became darker around me. That’s when the first inklings of true panic manifested; I’d never experienced this before, didn’t know what to do.
When I hit something hard with my hands, I realized I’d become so disoriented that I’d swum straight into the bottom…I somersaulted, pushed off with my feet, and started swimming again. But I was really deep. And it was utterly dark around me. Panic swelled. I kept swimming, but it was slow going. And I was about out of air. I fought harder…used more air. The surface wasn’t coming…oh, dear God, this is it, I figured… I was at my limit, no more O2 fumes, no more strength…I found myself making the conscious decision: “I’m taking a breath…if it’s air, I live, if it’s water, I die…
It was air.
I popped the surface and gulped…half a breath…then was slammed under again by the following wave. Tumbled. Tossed. Rag-dolled. I saw stars, just like in the cartoons, when I surfaced after that one…
Miraculously, my board was still with me; my leash hadn’t snapped. I hauled aboard and started paddling out of the path of the next wave. I couldn’t even feel my arms. When I’d moved into deeper water, I laid there a few moments… I’d come as close to my own death as I ever wanted to come, and I realized: I. Do. Not. Matter. The wave that almost killed me, was just a wave. Though I was so full of myself as a human being…Nature, the Ocean, that wave, did not care. I was, I am, just a puny human being, inconsequential to the world around me, in the grand scheme. It was, and remains, a humbling lesson.
I did paddle back out that day, after that wave. I knew if I didn’t, I might never surf there, might never surf big waves again. I sat for about two more hours, as darkness fell, as real stars salted the darkening sky… And I did catch a wave; a half-size tweener just to get me to the shore, back to land.
Big surf still scares me to this day. I want to ride it, I still paddle out when it comes, I even shaped myself an 8 footer for when my own personal “Big Wednesday” should come again. But it gives me the willies…each time I find myself underwater, tumbling, holding my breath, trying to relax in that deep dark place…
