Mike, looking back after exiting the icy Atlantic surf. Photo: Maureen McNamara
He told me his name was Mike and he’d driven almost 2 ½ hours from a small town on the western New Hampshire border, near Keene. The main East/West Route 101 would have delivered him to Hampton Beach in almost an hour’s less time, but he said he didn’t like surfing the Wall so much, that he liked the wave and the vibe better at my local spot here in Maine. So he’d turned north at the NH coast and made the extra 45 minute trek up to the Rivermouth in Ogunquit. While I snapped a few more shots of the lines still rolling in, I chatted with him about surfing and surfboards. I told him I build my own boards and showed him the two displacement hull boards I’d brought with me in the back of my Subaru. I explained the nuances of the design and contrasted them with the twinzer fish he’d been riding. Different design concepts, but both very valid vehicles for the long, walled up, reeling sandbar waves at the River.
The long-period swell was still dredging up some shoulder-high sets and both he and I had managed to catch some long rides on the bumpy (too much north), Northwest, almost side-shore faces. I’d watched most of the short-board tri-fin crew struggle with the wind on the take-offs, and when they boosted attempted airs, most often they’d get left behind while the wave reeled off without them. Mike told me it was only his fourth session of the year, that he was really more a skier than a hardcore surfer. But I could tell he had experience. Like me, he was older, and a bit stiff and slow on his takeoffs, but once he’d made that first turn, he seemed to settle into a flow with the wave, garnering speed and flying across the almost closed out waves with minimal input to his board. His style didn’t seem formulaic or homogenized like too much of the surfing I witness these days. Like me, he rode “Old School,” he surfed the wave more than the board. Aesthetically pleasing; more ballroom, than hip-hop.
While Mike and I chatted, I looked a few cars down in the parking lot as two girls from Quebec suited up. They didn’t seem to notice that they’d really missed the tide, and that it was mushing now as it filled in. Neither was properly equipped for the cold, wearing 3-mil suits and no hoods in the barely 50 degree water. I knew they wouldn’t last long, yet I had to smile as both, skipped…yes, skipped down the street with their boards under their arms. Tide, wind, insufficient rubber, no matter. They’d driven six hours down from Montreal and they were going surfing! How could you not admire their exuberance?
As I drove away, I thought about those girls and Mike. I live a five-minute drive from the ocean and 15 minutes from two of my favorite breaks. I can sometimes smell the ocean from my bungalow, three miles from the coast. Mike had driven over 100 miles; the girls had driven six hours. All for a day in the 50-degree ocean! Something is special in that. Surfing and the ocean have a mystical draw to those who are addicted to it.
Culling through the photos I shot that day after my own session had ended, I came across this one shot of Mike looking back at the waves after he’d exited the water. It’s something all surfers do. We all look back after leaving the water. You don’t see tennis players, or football players, or golfers, pausing to gaze and reflect on the court, the field, or links, not unless it’s their last game or match before they retire and they take one last nostalgic look back at the arena or stadium. But surfers, all surfers, we always look back. Hell, last summer I even broke my toe, stubbing it on a rock, as I climbed the bluff and turned to look back at the hurricane swell that was still pumping in overhead sets. Even after I’d cursed and danced around in pain, I looked back. Because in surfing, it’s all about the arena! Of course, the rides, the ritual waxing of the boards, the euphoria of exiting a tube, the adrenaline of duck-diving a big set, the giddy anticipation of driving up to the break when you know there’s a good swell–all these aspects can be compared to the rush of any athlete in any sport. However, surfing is way, way more than just another sport. It’s more than a “lifestyle” or “art form” or any of that drippy crap that it’s sometimes described as. Surfers, and surfing, are not like any other people, or any other activity. When it gets into you, it grabs hold of you like nothing else you’ll ever experience. Each time a session ends, and you turn your back to the ocean and begin to leave, there is something about it, something visceral that compels you to turn one last time and look back.
