“The longer the glide, the lovelier the tummy tickle.”
There is a glorious simplicity to sliding over water on your belly, wedged in the heartbeat of a wave, simultaneously drawing its energy while letting it push you away. It feels like a joke to me that the human body, with its lack of suitability to water, could so gracefully glide over its surface, like a return to some prior fishy instinct.
Recently, through no intention of my own, I’ve fallen in love with body surfing. I’ve never been interested in it before but through a chance meeting on a beach in Mexico, it has become the centerpiece of wave riding in my life over the past five months.
The combination of hollow tubes and the ease of dropping into waves makes for carefree fun. No leash, no board, no competition for waves. I can let big sets go to other people and still pull into smaller hollow barrels. The longer the glide, the lovelier the tummy tickle.
I feel my fitness improve in leaps and bounds, but really that’s a secondary benefit to the joy I feel. The more I do it the better I get and the more people on the beach ask questions. They’re astounded by the waves I am able to ride on my stomach and with a tiny piece of wood in my hand. It’s as if there was some skill to it.
This sensational deviation from my previous desires has brought me back to my early days of surfing. Days of exploration driven by goals that wander well within the bounds of playfulness. This is surfing, and I’ve never felt closer to it than when I am torpedoing through tubes with my chest just above the green.
