Weren’t we all there at one time?. Photo: @kook_of_the_day
A video showed up in my email the other day with one of those compelling headlines that made its link virtually impossible not to click: “Russian Woman Tows Into Big Wave at Nazarè…And It Does Not Go Well.” To be honest, they had me at “Russian Woman Tows Into…”, yet it turned out to be not some kind of spoof, but an actual clip of a female surfer on a ski sled, fully suited up in thick neoprene and an inflation vest, speaking excitedly (on what must’ve been ten or twelve Red Bulls, judging by the frenetic tone of her delivery) in a thick Russian accent about how she was really psyched to try tow-in surfing for the very first time— in 40 to 50-foot Nazarè.
Keep in mind we’re not talking about someone legit, like Russian National Team member Irina Kosobukina, the Motherland’s short and longboard champion. No, this was just some random woman (I’ll leave her nameless, for reasons to be made clear in the next few sentences) who apparently put in more time applying her mascara than adjusting her foot straps, yet who somehow convinced a member of Nazarè’s renowned big wave safety team to whip her into a couple 40-footers. You know, just for fun. And yes, it does not go well. On her first attempt she does, in fact, make the wave, awkwardly bouncing down the shoulder with all the aplomb of a garbage can kicked over at the top of a steep hill.
Emboldened, she gets pulled into a second wave, which she drops down flailing like a marionette with its strings cut, only to get mowed over by a cold mountain of Portuguese whitewater. And though I’m sure plenty of the big wave boys wish they felt comfortable enough to cry on camera after a traumatic trip through the Nazarè rinse cycle, she actually does, tears sparkling on the tips of her mascaraed lashes. Now I’m not a heartless man, and I really was moved by her obvious distress, but while listening to her breathless sobs, delivered as if she were the first person on earth to experience a bad big wave wipeout, all I could think was, “Where do these kooks come from?”
A good question. And one that, for me, at least, prompted a second: “Where did the first kook come from?” Which, naturally led to a third: “What, exactly, is a kook?” I thought I’d tackle the second question first, looking for the earliest description of kookdom I could find (“kook” at this stage being defined as “an inexperienced surfer.) My research led me back to the famous American author Mark Twain’s classic 1866 travelogue Roughing It, and a passage describing a pertinent experience in what was then known as the Sandwich Islands:
“I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.”
Okay, so Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain was his non de plum, but you knew that) was obviously a kook – surf history’s first, so far as accredited 19th century descriptions are concerned. The first ‘modern’ reference to kookdom I could find came from Tom Blake’s seminal volume, Hawaiian Surfboard, published in 1935, in which he describes a scenario at Waikiki that has repeated itself at that particular break every day since:
“The first boy is no doubt inexperienced for he was too far over in the break which caused him and his board to “pearl dive,” or go straight down to the bottom, giving him a severe ducking. This dive was caused partly because he did not slide or turn his board at an angle soon enough…”
Blake goes on to recount a subsequent disaster in which an all-girl tandem team “jams up” with another inexperienced surfer, “…and all three lose their boards and get ducked, barely missing getting hit by the loose boards.” Clinical, but not completely dispassionate, Blake then adds, “Rather brave these girls to be out there.”
So sure, lineups have seen inexperienced surfers out there giving it a go since…well, since history’s very first surfer paddled out. Which makes it reasonable to assert that every single one of us (well, maybe not Kelly Slater) has been a kook at some time in our personal journey. By the term’s strictest definition, that is (inexperience). Because somewhere along the line, the designation of “kook” began to be applied not to those just learning to surf, but to those learning to surf after we did. In the same way that no matter our age, an “old person” is always ten years older, it seems that regardless of when we happened to take up surfing, everyone who came after is the kook, not us. Because to acknowledge that we all learned how to surf after someone else is to admit that we’ve been one of those “inexperienced surfers.” We’ve all been Mark Twain with “a couple barrels of water” in us. But unlike the great author, we just don’t like to admit it.
When I was 12 years old, I let my dad talk me into paddling out into 12-to 15-foot west peak Sunset, knowing full well that I was far too inexperienced to be anywhere near that strenuous lineup, but going out anyway. A potentially dangerous situation and, again, by definition, a total kook move. So upon reflection, maybe I was a bit harsh with my judgment of the hapless Russian lady and her makeup. A bit more extreme, perhaps, dropping the rope for the first time in heavy Nazarè, but not that much different than my misguided Sunset session. Could it be that my reactive response (“Where do these kooks come from?”) was, at the unconscious level, just an effort to deny where I came from? Where all of us, at one time or another, came from? Provocative questions, because to admit that we were all once kooks is to then realize that none of us are kooks, but just fellow surfers at different points on a timeline.
All except those locals who towed the Russian woman into that bomb, then laughed into the camera as she cried. Now those guys are kooks.
