The Point at Punta de Lobos, Chile

So, I may be a boogie boarder after all. Just as 2011 may be the year of taking on new adventures and new identities: I was fortunate enough to marry the most wonderful man, in the city where we met, surrounded by family and friends, on the eve of a trip to our new home in Chile. There may have been a blizzard on the East Coast that grounded some dear ones, but somehow cousins arrived at 3AM the morning of the wedding (after five previous flights canceled), somehow my best friend from college secured a flight on Delta (after two hours on hold thanks to a secret number no other Delta customers seemed to have), and most of all, I looked down that aisle at the man I love and finally understood what it means to have your breath taken right out of your chest. I would avoid the cliche if it weren’t so undeniably true.

We flew out the next day to Santiago, landed on New Year’s Eve morning, ran back to our apartment for a quick nap, and then drove out to the coast, a part of Chile I’ve been eager to see after leaving an apartment in San Francisco where I can hear the waves crash at Ocean Beach. We drove through pine trees that reminded us of Tahoe, horse-studded hillsides that reminded me of my hometown of Portola Valley, and turned onto the dirt roads of Punta de Lobos that didn’t have to summon any comparison to home. We were there. By the Pacific no less, but some 6,000 miles away. Within 24 hours, we traveled from winter’s rain to summer’s rays, from “single” to newlyweds, and from the familiarity of home to the excitement of another hemisphere’s landscapes.

I recently completed a surf project for a class assignment and also to understand my husband’s passion a bit better. I learned how to read the water, took a lesson after a few lackluster attempts on my own, and finally rode some waves! The rush was electric and the exhaustion rewarding, but Punta de Lobos is known as big wave country. As my husband tells me, it has some of the best lefts in the world. Those lefts also have some 20-foot faces. In other words, not the place for beginners to make a splash.

Instead, I took a tip from the local kiddies and rented a boogie board. In my effort to challenge myself to take on surfing, I might have lost track of how fun it is to splash around in the smaller waves. How stabilizing it is to still have your feet on the sand when you jump for the wave that looks right. How thrilling it is to catch one that takes you all the way into shore. How long that rush can last. How your body can still meet the challenge of an ever-moving ocean and how good that physical use can feel. How the concentration and the letting go can funnel your mind into the present moment. I simply loved it.

All the while, I knew my husband was out there, too, catching the larger waves just around the point, the same waves that eventually tempered down into the white water I was hopping on and hoping to ride to its completion, however momentary. We were still riding together, he and I, as we get to on the long, glassy wave curling ahead of us — one we’re equipped for with equal skill, as partners.