A Different Ride
"Necesito del mar porque me enseña: no sé si aprendo música o conciencia: no sé si es ola sola o ser profundo o sólo ronca voz o deslumbrante suposición de peces y navios. El hecho es que hasta cuando estoy dormido de algún modo magnético circulo en la universidad del oleaje." - from "El Mar" by Pablo Neruda
A rhythm to it, as is natural after five days of chasing waves here at Playa Encuentro: up with the rooster’s call and your lady and your twin 15ers, boy and girl. Water, coffee, banana, Vitamin I (buprofen), and then walk in the pre-dawn dark 300 meters to beach with Luna the stray, long-eared black dog, medium-sized, easy temperament, cowrie shell collar. Check the waves, exchange “Buen dia” with the security guard cradling his pistol-grip 12 gauge (same friendly, 20-something who when his shift started at 6pm last eve sat by you all at the beach shack bar/grill watching Inglaterra vs Croacia, World Cup action, via Telemundo on a projection-screen).
Now grab boards from the racks, affix leashes, wax them up, and mind your step from the beach rocks onto the reef, for there are urchins, stunning pink-red at core with brown spines (you brought tweezers, in case), and paddle out, taking a few waves on the head. The sun’s not up. There’s gentle light. You sit on the board, immersed in beauty, awake, and read the incoming swells as if text for a sentence, a line to maybe catch, study closer. Beauty, immersion, yes; how else to say it? It’s just surfing. Maybe you space out a bit. Maybe intimacy and estrangement nibble at your toes. The waves are abundant, easy to read, small - knee to belly, rarely chest - and playful. You don’t wait long. You pivot and paddle in, stand, cruise easy down the bowly wall, and not too fast or you’ll outrun the curl. Maybe a slow cutback. Or maybe you shuffle forward to connect the inside section, where it steepens again, and eventually you fall off shallow, flat, mindful of the reef.
A mostly dry hair paddle out from the channel, that glidey, wave-riding buzz of peace, soft and exhilarating, in your gut, as if in ocean-tuning, the feeling charged more by watching your children, one or both, on a right sliding towards you. Such grace, this dance, such indulgence. Or something. It’s crazy, a gift, that you’re even here, alive, with your kids and also a good woman, joyous and loving, who’s got your backs on the beach.
"I need the sea because it teaches me. I don’t know if I learn music or consciousness, if it’s a single wave or its deep depth or only its hoarse voice or its shining suggestion of ships and fish. The fact is that even when I’m asleep in some magnetic mode I move in the university of waves." - from "The Sea" by Pablo Neruda (translated version by OOT)
The last couple of summers, your kids had a few days each of messing around on surfboards in the waves off the Carolina coast. They wanted to surf. Forever they’ve loved water, currents, river, creek, and lake swimming, dunking, floating, bodysurfing, boogie boarding, anything. Near Morehead City, you pushed them into broken waves, watched them stand and fall, eager for more, to paddle in, catch their own, no assistance, which they did. It brought back memories for you, that old hunger, too.
Forty-three years now since you first flailed at 12 with your uncle’s La Jolla Surf Systems seven foot single fin – 1983, the Jersey Shore. Your mom and dad fine with you on your own, out of their hair, at God Beach (in front of the convent – no lifeguards there, no rules against surfers) chasing waves all day, or trying to, flailing, nose diving, being held down, cuts and scrapes, stitches only once from that big fin slicing your foot. A few key pointers from the locals now and then, a few angry words – “watch out, kook”, etc. You were enchanted, hooked, obsessed. Just paddling out, a few duck dives, thrashings, whatnot, put you in touch with mysteries you’d never name but were coming to crave. Once out there, sitting on the board, waiting, watching, it melted some rock in you. Took centerstage in your dreams, too, for years, the swell-rhythms, the waiting, expecting, positioning, odd fears and joys. And that recurring one, not too often, where no matter how much you paddle, you never catch a wave nor reach the beach again, until you awaken.
From then on, though you were raised inland, you found a board whenever by the ocean, and paddled out. After a few years, you got the gist of it. The motions stuck in your body’s hard drive, soft drive, too. You sought similar energies - patience, attention, balance, trust, timing, etc. - in other pursuits, relationships, jobs, cooking, etc. You lived in the early- to mid-Nineties near the coast, pre-internet, checking the weather radio’s buoy readings a daily ritual - Cashes Ledge, Matinicus Rock, Georges Bank; this was Maine, the swell windows brief but good when they hit. Those empty lineups, you and maybe a friend or two and the cliffs and the seals and the rivermouth and neoprene. Ensuing decades you lucked, short timer though you were, into riding waves off most every state on the U.S. East Coast, Nova Scotia, too, and some further flung spots. Beach time has been scant in recent years, such that you’ve caught more waves in the past five days than in the last decade. The rides are different now with age, the aches and pains, but no less joyful. You rarely pump anymore when up, minimal hot dogging, too, just cruise casual and easy.
First sun, now, after several waves, cloudedges sharding it. Two locals have joined the lineup, pleasant vibes all around. There’s the sea turtle, branchnub of its head, ancient periscope – the same one as yesterday? Not many birds here. One tern windhunting east late-morning, facing the slowly building trades. A few more rides before the sun’s full, cloudless, beaming. You hold up your hand to shadow it, to better study the incoming swells. Your son takes off on another long right. And there goes your daughter on the very next wave. You follow two waves later, catch up with them for the paddle out. They look at you with big smiles and a bit of curiosity, as if sensing some quirk in your wave, how the gift of this time and place, maybe, seeing them not only nail down the basics of catching and riding waves but growing more reverant by the day for the place, the people, the sea, the land, all the particular motions, holds you as if in fever.
By 9am there are 8-10 people out. A couple of goofy footers, local rippers, getting airtime on the chunkier, faster, shallow-reefed left, La Izquierda, across the channel; so fun to watch them, the view from here directly into the walling guts of their waves. There are youngens out now, 8-12 year old groms and their parents, also some locals, the Dominican crew – surf instructors getting a sesh before their teaching starts - pumping thrusters and fish shapes, one or two loggers hanging five or ten and generally hot dogging hard as joy on their sometimes Rasta-colored vehicles. An intent yet friendly bunch. You hear snippets of Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and German being spoken, all sorts of accents. Did someone just call the turtle, whose head just popped up again, Nena? Is that why 99 Luftballoons is in your ear, odd remix with the 7 Seconds-version?
As the tradewinds build, you check your position in the lineup via a stunted sea almond just up the beach, wave to your kids to paddle east, avoid being blown too far left. In late afternoon, the kiteboarders and wingfoilers will run the show, everything too blown out from the 30-40 kph trades. For now, it’s a few more waves before taking the slow urchin-walk, spent, onto the beach to find shade and watch your kids and wait for your lady to return from a walk with Luna.
Later, a Noon breakfast, siesta, some games of poker with sea grape seeds and shells for betting, loot, and then maybe a walk to Playa Secreta or west along the lava rock points alternating with sandy paths in tropical forest just off the beach. No, maybe no walk today, thanks, just a camp chair under the sea almond trees with a view of the breaks and a good book, the wind’s bachata with the leaves and limbs, Luna and other beach strays coming around for pets at the ears, the neck, maybe a small, old coconut dropped from one’s mouth for some fetch.
