Watching the Waves, Rodeo Beach, Fort Cronkite

I have attempted to surf three times in my life—each experience is emotionally distinct and only one could be deemed at all “successful” (I’ll get around to sharing them all). In the meantime, I have designed a journey for my travel writing class that consists of my attempt to learn about the ocean, its waves and tides, its violence and its peace. In Caught Inside, his book on surfing through a year in Santa Cruz, Daniel Duane calls it “the peace of total absorption” (49). With my mind on any number of things these days, I can’t help but be drawn into that mindset.

Leading up to a real surf lesson, I will study the buoy and weather reports, check the waves and tides, estimate wind direction and intervals, and try to read these heavy crests of water as I might the lines of a novel, looking for meaning and sense and where I might fit among the aquatic prose. I will also research the history of the sport, from its Polynesian and Peruvian origins to its popular migrations, to the culture it spawned and the lifestyle it dictates, to the men who have dominated its breaks to the women in the water now.

I am also in love with a life-long surfer and there is something to be said for learning to speak the same language and whatever passions might be translated in the process. In retracing the Northern California coastline Ryan learned to surf, I will chart my own journey from Stinson Beach to Santa Cruz. In so doing, I will revisit my few forays out into the cold Pacific and aim to understand something real of the liquid land I seek to explore.

In some ways this is about chasing an envy I feel for the surfer who drops everything to get out there, who sets a lifestyle according to the waves. That prioritization, something I wish I gave to my writing even more than I do, seems to say something about one’s ability to forge a real and lasting relationship with a natural force so beyond the self that it gives no choice but to yield, to meet the challenge that might present on any given day, and free yourself to move at its speed.

Finally, I have another shore (and quest) in mind as well. As I will be moving from California to Chile next June, I can’t help but think about the similarities and differences along their respective 4,000-mile and 840-mile coastlines. While I aim to understand the evolution, joys, and requirements of the sport and my own budding relationship to it, I also wish to learn a little more about both of my homes.

So, here goes! One beginner blogs from the board…