Mateus Herdy, making time come to a standstill in Mexico. Photo: Ryan Miller//RB Content Pool
Sitting in our empty house in September, packed bags by the door, I tried to put pen to page. Instead, I looked out the window
In the glass, I saw two versions of myself. There was the one person who’d skidded into our muddy Rhode Island driveway from San Diego back in June. The guy who sat in on the beach near our house and watched the early summer sun melt away, full of hazy potential of what the season could bring. Back then, the days were just starting to stretch out, and it felt like they’d never end.
Then, there was the newer version of myself, who nursed a case of writer’s block and suddenly, did not want to leave. This new version dropped the pen and went back to the beach for answers, or a time portal in the sand. The scene was the same as it was in June, if a few degrees cooler. The sun edged down behind the dunes, painting the Atlantic reddish orange. Swimmers in goggles spun arms through the chop. A few surfers struggled to stand.
The next morning, my fiancé and I said our goodbyes and voyaged across this sprawling country, from Virginia to Tennessee to the heat of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Through the wildness of New Mexico and Arizona and finally to the sandy feet of the mighty Pacific. To an apartment we call “The Submarine,” a downsized tradeoff for being able to walk to the surf.
This is our fourth year out here, but as the days grow shorter, I feel further away from home than before. I check the surf report in Rhode Island each morning out of habit. The waves have been holding strong in the warm autumn sun, puffed higher and cleaner by offshores. Here, in an uncharacteristic shock of irony, the swells struggle to break.
As we get older, the cycle of time feels like a runaway treadmill. A year turns over as quickly as a playing card, the summer vanishes like smoke. Every year we bounce from east to west and back again it gets harder to leave family and friends behind.
As we packed up the house back east, I wiped sweat off my brow and muttered: “We’re always leaving.” True or not, the idea made me want to stand perfectly still on the deck as the light fell and the crickets chirped, before the leaves could change color and fall from the trees. I wished I could press a button and go back to the beginning of the summer when everything was ahead of us.
We may constantly be leaving, but that also means we’re perpetually arriving. Even if you’re not moving across the country each year, people rarely stand still. Life pushes and pulls us, and we try to stall the haphazard cascade of seconds, months, and years. Meditation, music, and art can help us to slow down time, if only for a little while. So can surfing.
A few days after we landed in California, my legs swept me back down the beach, board in hand. A hint of the old excitement churned in my chest as I jogged, my toes smacking the hard sand, the sea sucking rocks back into its belly. Dolphins dotted the horizon as a handful of guys and girls traded waves in the fog of dawn.
This bittersweet relationship we have with the passing of time is replicated in the water. When we surf, we’re always moving and reinterpreting. We hover on the cusp of countless decisions: Drop in or pass? Hit the lip or kick out? To stall and duck into a barrel is an attempt to pause the wave, to halt the rapid swirl of time as long as possible.
Riding waves is also based on the eternal cycle of arrival and departure. Pulling into the break and scoping the waves. Riding that last wave in on your belly, satiated and happy. As we cycle through the lineup, we are either coming and going, riding in, or looping back out. Often, the speed with which we must react on a wave forces us to move instinctively, out of the grasp of conscious thought until the end of the ride.
Surfing, like time, is ceaseless motion that we struggle to control, and that each of us interpret and experience differently. Sometimes our memories of rushing walls of water fade too fast. Other times it’s the opposite. One fast but mostly unremarkable wave from a couple winters ago is trapped in my head on a loop, perhaps because the entire ride, I was racing a roiling lip that stretched over my head, perpetually on the verge of disaster.
In life, as well, we sometimes remember things we don’t want to relive and forget many of the things we do. I forgot, for example, that when we set out on the road last June, I was excited to go home, yet also sad to leave California. There were times in the beginning of the summer when I missed my life out West, too, before those memories were folded and replaced by new snapshots.
Embedded in this idea of constant motion is the idea of perspective. Do we choose to view our ever-changing paths with optimism or pessimism? Are we upset when leaving or excited for what comes next? When we arrive at the beach and the waves are small and gutless, are we frustrated and angry, or do we paddle out feeling fortunate to do so?
Yesterday at my local break, the surf was decidedly not pumping, but the vibe was high. Sure, people talked about the colder water temps and the lack of real swell, but they also laughed and cheered for each other. I paddled back and forth. I stayed moving. I remembered that coming and going is a part of life.
Early in each summer, my family clinks glasses and waits for my brother-in-law to make his annual proclamation, one that was passed down to him: “it’s all ahead of us.” We laugh and drink and agree, despite knowing how fast the days will burn to ash, how quickly the crisp breezes of autumn will find us.
As surfers, we’re always looking ahead. Yesterday, it struck me how many times the pack moved and rearranged in anticipation of what could be approaching. Maybe that’s an encapsulation of both the heartbreak and the beauty of the passage of time. We lose the current wave, but we stay hopeful for the next set, the next laugh, the next drive across highways that unfold forever.
The waves will come. It’s impossible to stand still, waiting, and we can’t go back. We have to keep moving, thinking, and paddling, even when it’s too easy, and especially when it’s hard.
