Fear: it’s what keeps us coming back. Photo: Karina Skrypnik
I was in the middle of a fast, fun backside carve when I made a crucial mistake: I looked back. A wall of water blotted out the sky, holding me in its palm. My mind erupted in white-hot panic. Normally I love the inside section at my local wave for its steeps and speed, but what rose behind me was a whole different animal: a thick slab, sucking up energy and foaming at the mouth. This was not a “fun” wave. I take that back; for other surfers, it probably was. For me, the innocent swell had morphed into a demon on my tail, gaining ground, ready to tear me to shreds then slam me against the rocky reef until I succumbed.
I’m not sure why getting properly drilled by a good-sized wave still freaks me out. I surf routinely these days, I’m a solid paddler and swimmer, and aside from a few brief hold-downs, I’m lucky enough to not have had any major problems. Plus, aside from a few hurricane swells back East or winter storms out West, the size of the waves that I surf day in and day out simply don’t pose much of a threat to my life. It’s probably more dangerous driving my rusty Jeep down the 101 than it is to paddle out — especially because the horn just stopped working.
Maybe my deep, dark fears go back to the time that my grandfather accidentally dropped me in the ocean as an infant. He was holding me in the waves, and then apparently, a wave knocked me out of his hands, and I flipped into the chop. A look of horror crossed his face, my dad says. What I remember comes in curt flashes: sunshine glinting on the surface; whirling my small arms through cloudy, cold darkness; then being yanked up and back out into the haze, dazed and confused.
Or perhaps it was the time when, bodysurfing alongside my dad a few years later, I dove under a wave as hard as I could precisely as he leapt into wave-riding position like an eager striped bass. Our heads met with a resounding crack and the next thing I remember I was standing on the beach, disoriented, spitting out water as my mom cradled my pounding head.
Back to the snarling wave that was dying to work me over. I’d known from the start that the day’s wave size was past my pay grade and building, and I’d just made it out the back. It was foggy, too, so the sets had a way of appearing in front of you as if a misty curtain was suddenly yanked up. But I was in a familiar spot where I’ve had some of the best rides of my life, and when I saw the wave coming, an innate and inane force told me to go for it. When free-flowing fun flashed to panic, though, I stepped on my front foot, dug my rail and shot straight up the wall, ejecting, board flipping like a seal as I dove to flatwater safety. No harm, no foul, I thought and I paddled back out.
Yet as I replayed the wave in my head, I realized that my first few composed, flowing turns had been completely thrown off by one thing: a healthy dose of fear. I’d wasted an entire section – what if it’d barreled? What had I missed out on, and more importantly, what was my brain’s strange reasoning? The day before, I’d had one of my best surfs in weeks. I’d been locked in, my ego sound as a drum. But on this bigger day, the magic was gone, and I hadn’t even been clocked by a wave. Yet.
I took the high line on my next overheard wave, but my damaged psyche ordered me to bail out before it got too critical. A closeout exploded on my next — great wave choice. Lost in my cloudy thoughts, I failed to see an outside set materialize out of the dense fog. I made it up and over the first wave by the skin of my teeth and when I saw the next wall, my fears were finally confirmed. Rushed, haphazard duck dive aside, I got smashed by karma, board ripped from me as I flailed in the icy blackness where top was bottom and the bottom was endless.
I surfaced with a deep, ragged gasp, and rode in on my belly, casually served up on the beach by the callous mouth of Mother Nature. I clambered across the rocks with numb toes. My heartbeat slowed. How had a session that started out fun and manageable gone so wrong?
Fear is a part of surfing, just as it is a part of life. I remember a mix of fear and excitement sizzling in my veins when dropping into a big hit in the snowboard park, or even a halfpipe with a few feet of vert as a kid. The sea gives us so much, in and outside of surfing, but the ocean is also unpredictable, sprawling and sometimes insidious. Those walls of water have a funny way of climbing into the murky recesses of my mind and staying a while.
I stayed relatively calm when I got caught inside this time. In the past, when I didn’t get to surf as much, I admit I had some panicked moments. In New England, it’s often either flat or fairly big, so there aren’t as many of those manageable, fun days to practice on. Plus, I always surfed with guys who were better than me and great at goading me on. During one hurricane swell I tensed up when I was caught against a rocky jetty, because somehow I knew that a wave would toss me directly against the rocks before I could get out. Guess what? It did. I got off with a couple of bruises and a cracked board, but the memory of flying uncontrollably towards that rocky wall lives on.
Maybe that’s why a good surf, or just a good wave can lift our spirits and make our day, even our week. Cement packs a punch — the scars on my legs attest to that — but it isn’t moving too much. Deep powder and steeps are unpredictable, and riding through a pumping snowstorm as the wind howls off the cornice can take us out just as suddenly as the sea. But much of (non-wave pool) surfing is anchored in uncertainty. A rogue set can materialize from the foggy horizon in the time it takes to pee in your wetsuit. A euphoric curl that you thought would be a blank canvas for you to rip apart can suddenly jack up and threaten you like a stranger pulling a knife in a dark alley. The best surfers shrewdly predict wave shapes and patterns in seconds, (myself not included, clearly) but even they find themselves in tough spots when they test their own towering limits.
I guess that’s why all of us, from novices to big-wave chargers and everyone in between, keep coming back to surfing. We’re addicted to the laid-back, sunny sessions as much as we are the darkness and the thrills. We’re both entranced by the ocean’s vast unpredictability and able to tap into the power of the water that rakes and swirls us around the globe. The sea can scare us, can bring us down to the depths and hold us there, but it also has unrivaled power to keep us smiling all day and to deliver us somewhere new.
