A turn like that will make up for all the waves on the head. Photo: Unsplash
While I haven’t exactly been landlocked these past few months, I’ve been swamped by family time, work gigs, home projects — including the Caddyshack-esque defense of my garden and sanity from a rapidly reproducing groundhog — and relentlessly listless seas. The Atlantic may be starting to wake up — Hola, Ernesto! — but since June, my interest in surfing, which morphed to ferocious levels over the last couple years, has suffered.
Life is all about ebb and flow, and I know that when my fiancé resumes her PhD prep in California and we return to the land of constant waves, I’ll once again check the surf report each night and fall asleep dreaming of new swallow tails and head-high, uncrowded rights. But at this point, the shaky withdrawal symptoms have ebbed and my energy has shifted away from the calm, seaweed-clogged Atlantic. I can’t surf, so why remain so obsessed with surfing?
Yet the old itch is still around, even hidden beneath sunburned skin, and last weekend, some tempting waves sidled up to our summer-stalled breaks. As a homegrown New England surfer, there’s never a question – when waves arrive, you go. You have to work? You call in sick. You’ve got kids? You disown them. Plans with your partner? Divorce is a reasonable option, especially if you can get in a double or triple session the same day.
On the first day of the swell, I blew it. I tried to hang out with my fiancé on a Saturday beach day, seeing as she’d had a long week, and surf a fickle spot nearby. Trusting in the conditions at a spot with no cam or report has worked for me in the past, but this time, I vaulted the dunes to find good ol’ victory at sea. I grabbed my board anyway, trying to ignore the fact that I’d aggravated an old injury the day before, lifting weights in my dusty garage like a certified meathead.
At the most, I dusted off my duck diving skills. At the least, my “session” was a tired exercise in overzealous futility. I dove under exactly 379 waves and got one right, during which I ate shit. My back screamed, I felt old and clumsy and out of touch. Back on the hot sand, I drowned my sorrows in a crisp pilsner and had a conversation with myself that I haven’t had in a long while.
Look, Bud: surfing has given you a ton of epic memories, especially over the last couple of years. But hey, Killer, you had a good run! You’ve got a garden and a gopher to deal with, so sell your boards and pull those golf clubs out of the closet. It might be time for a good, long break. You know, one of those “breaks” that is totally a breakup, but no one wants to admit to yet.
But, late that night, I found myself checking the report. In the early morning darkness as the coffee maker growled, I hunched in the kitchen, blinking away boozy cobwebs. Twenty minutes later I was jogging down seaside back roads and dodging barnacled rocks to be welcomed by clean, waist high swells and an assorted crowd of grateful souls. On my first wave, the doubt and frustration of my Saturday session lingered, and I put the kook in Kook Slams. I paddled back out, sat still for a second and took a deep breath. It was Sunday. I had nowhere else to go. Assorted chatter drifted from peak to peak. A hawk looped through the sky, searching for breakfast.
The endless blue sea clicked back into focus, and suddenly everything became both familiar and simple again. I didn’t necessarily remember the act I had done so many times before — I stopped thinking altogether. A few hours later, I walked down the same back roads with sandy toes, eyes glazed over. Even the cut on the bottom of my feet burned with satisfaction.
What pushed me to head out on Sunday when every other signal was telling me to stay in bed? Why did I wake up early as the foggy neighborhood slept, as the birds winged through the dawn for their own secret reasons?
We can’t lose surfing like a set of keys, and we can’t forget it like a drunken story. The brilliantly colored, razor-sharp experience of riding waves is tattooed deep beneath our skin, and no amount of flat water, wave withdrawal, woodchuck battles, or wacked-out back injuries can blot out what is now instinctual behavior. Even when we dare to think that the love affair might be over, even when we betray the cycle of swells; surfing takes us back, no questions asked.
As I sit here, once again staring out at infinite Atlantic flatness, I’m eternally thankful. Next time, I’ll be ready.
