Surf travel is dead. It’s done. The internet’s killed everything – and me slowly along with it. Indo’s packaged up for $1999 and the Seven Sisters should be called the Seventy San Diegans.
The world’s fucking choking on a machine of perpetual economic growth, and my bleeding heart reeks like the worst of it. I wish I was alive in the seventies when surfing was independent, wetsuits sucked, and acid must’ve made everything better.
Remember the old days? Before the swell forecasts that you and I check daily? Before our friend’s Facebook updates made us feel more inadequate than lavish car advertisements?
Remember when we used to sit and watch that river over the hill, instead of TV? Remember that!?!
Is there anywhere left untouched? Is there anyone free of smartphone life-support or nine-to-five paradigms?
Where’s our curiosity gone? Our imaginations? Our time? And our tiny paper riverboats sent down that same undulating brook, heavily laden with youthful dreams – when did they sink?
All sets of questions pulsing through my mind each morning on the way to work. Annie Dillard once said: “How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives.”
And I feel like I’ve thrust my one singular life into the ordinary shape of six feet worth of work, 18.25 inches of preparing for work/sleeping, and 2.24 inches of trying to pretend like weekends are enough to appease the soul. They aren’t; and it’s slowly killing me. We’re so detached from the reality of the natural world – the elements, the seasons, even our food — that it’s killing us all.
What am I doing? What am I contributing to? This is my life that’s passing me by, my best years even, and I’m drowning in the stupefying fear that I won’t keep up with my peers if I don’t keep it up.
No. No gracias. Tidak terimakasih.
I’m not going to live like this, let alone die like that…
I know what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna quit this quasi-existence, no regrets, and I’m gonna book a ticket, yes! A ticket to Alaska. And I’m gonna get a motorcycle. And some maps to explore the world. I’ll ask Corey Graham to shape a purple single-fling and a red widow-maker, yeah he’d be the one. Then I’ll ride south. Real south.
That was a year ago now. Since the day I rolled off scared from the ferry into the remote solitude of coastal Alaska, I’ve a learnt a little about those questions. It hasn’t been easy. Would’ve been much safer to stay at home.
I almost died on the road down from the Arctic Ocean; then stood alone and face-to-face with a huge and reared-up grizzly bear; had some gnarly crashes on the motorcycle; was surrounded at 2 a.m. by big coyote packs in my tent in the wilderness; even marched through Tijuana in handcuffs under false pretenses; and finally had my whole motorcycle side-car setup stolen in broad daylight.
Lost almost everything. A waterfall’s worth of worry and doubt holding me under. Took a whole month to claw to the surface, to organize more wheels, and to blast back into Latin America.
Adventure, by definition, is no plain sailing. But it pays to notice the lining on any bursting cumulonimbus, outshining the rain almost every time, just gotta look for it.
I’ve overcome challenges, have 1000-mile stared across wilderness unimaginable, learnt from shamans and artisans, been spat out of foreign tubes deep beyond hope, gave some infamous reefs a go, made many new friends, rode epic mountain passes, explored vast deserts with my oldest mates… and even fell for a beautiful girl who is about to buy a bike and ride south with me all the way down to Tierra Del Fuego, or The Land Of Fire.
Life and adventure are now my welcome dictators. Even my cynicism is waning.
I don’t claim to know more than you, or proffer that moto-surfing is an answer to anything at all – it isn’t. I don’t even have the answers to all the questions that plagued me in my old “home” life. But I can say this — I am not returning to it.
Things have definitely changed for the better in my little world, and I’m determined to get deeper still, to ride this lurching foamball of life. I’ve just taken off.
There’s so much vibrancy outside the fetid rat race, for those of us lucky enough to have a choice. For those of us privileged enough to not starve daily, or innocently sift through fecal rivers in search of recyclable aluminum cans. Because those unrelenting rivers flow fast and hard in some parts of the world.
Perhaps take a moment to be thankful yours doesn’t. Then find your own waterway or tributary in life. Grab a canoe, a board or even a paper riverboat laden with dreams. And set forth — say goodbye to the safety of the shore and follow your own riparian meanderings.
And as you float downstream, be sure to bow to the mountains, hoot to the sky, whisper gratitude to the fish you’ll eat, and drink deeply from the love of a new friend.
Then one day as you go with the flow on your unknown course, who knows, that winding stream might just round a bend and float you down a muddy delta, deep into the blue, blue expanse of a pulsating ocean.
Matty Hannon is a surfer and filmmaker halfway through a moto-surfing odyssey from the top of the world, to the bottom. If you’d like to learn more about the documentary film, please visit SlowBurningDreams.com or follow the journey on Instagram via @matty_hannon.
