Cowell’s Beach, Santa Cruz, CA

You never forget the first time. Mine was half my life ago at Cowell’s Beach in Santa Cruz, appropriately known as the first place on the North American continent to be surfed. In 1885, three princes from Hawaii took a trip over the hills from the military academy where they were studying, shaped their own redwood boards, and introduced the practice that has been a defining rhythm of the city for decades (Moore, Sweetness and Blood 2-3).

Fifteen years ago, however, all I knew was that the girls’ water polo team was going to skip practice with the boys’ swim team and caravan over Highway 17’s same snaking slopes and straight to the beach. It was the time of day that curved from late afternoon to early evening. I have no idea what the tides were doing. I can’t remember whose longboard or wetsuit I borrowed, but I remember the board seemed like the golden ticket to a few stolen hours. No matter what happened, the next time someone asked me if I had ever surfed, I’d have something to say. When we gazed up at the bluff, people looked as small and silhouetted as we must have from where we paddled and slipped, freezing and happy, doing our best. I never did catch a wave that day; the waves were small and the sun was setting into the late spring night. Getting dressed between the two open doors of the old Suburban a short while later, my fingers and toes were so numb they felt useless, but used; foreign, but traveled.

And you never forget the first time you stand up. Nearly fifteen years passed before I tried again at the very same beach. By then I had visited two other continents, managed seven East Coast winters, fallen in and out of love and then in for good, and had been back in California long enough to want to try again. I got my hands on a cap and booties this time to combat the mid-winter Pacific even though it was a rare day in January that could have been mistaken for June, clear enough to see straight past Monterey. I trusted Ryan’s watery path across the current, but as we got closer to the lineup, my nerves woke. What if I dropped in without intending to? Or, far worse, collided with another surfer? The ocean moves after all. It’s not like skiing, where at least you can count on the mountain to stay put. The motion is the whole point, the constant shifting, the reading required to sense where to plant your feet against a portable plank of solid ground.

I was a fish out of water in water so murky I couldn’t see the my feet. As we bobbed in place, the front of our boards broke the surface like the arching noses of curious seals. Ryan stopped to point to where the waves were coming in like marching rows of disciplined soldiers. We were a good twenty yards from the other black-suited surfers whose gender or age or nationality were camouflaged by slick neoprene shells. But I wasn’t there to bob, so we paddled over. I sat, my rubbery legs straddled over the wide foam board, and gazed south at the next set of waves coming in until I heard Ryan yell: “Turn! Go!” This is tunnel vision. This is “yielding to the present,” as the Buddhists say. I missed altogether, but felt the powerful slither of the serpent beneath me, the life and breath of it even. I tried again, managed to get up on my knees, but lost my balance and bailed back into the dark water.

But I wasn’t worried about the lineup anymore. I saw the next wave growing, gathering itself up with every second of the interval. To reach out and grab this serpent by the neck, all I had to do was paddle hard and stand, right? And the visualization surfers describe as essential kicked in. I popped up and planted my bootied feet on the board. Time, two seconds really, maybe three, slowed down so my mind could catch up to the feeling, which I can only describe as the closest I’ve felt to flight. As local surfer and surfing historian Matt Warshaw said, when I asked him recently for advice he’d give to a beginner: “It’s an incredibly difficult sport, and the rewards, over the course of a given day, even for good surfers, are measured in seconds. That’s what’s hard, but that’s also partly why it becomes so addictive.” At the close of those first seconds on that first ride, when the white-watered lips plunged down to meet the green murk, I jumped off by choice until my gleeful yelp was swallowed whole.

For Ryan, the glee comes from more advanced maneuvers certainly, but the rewards are no less straight-forward or immediate. His favorite part is getting barrels. “When you’re inside the wave. But that doesn’t always happen. It can’t necessarily be your goal. That’s always desirable, but you can’t always force that. The opportunity presents itself and you’ve got to take advantage. That feeling right before you get the wave and you know you’re going to catch it and it’s coming toward you and it’s a good wave and you can see that, that’s a good moment. That’s right where you want to be.”