NATURE HIGHLIGHTS
Funky texture when the rip and currents make incongruent wave edges and ledges
You are on it mid face and the wave buckles and underbites
Empties from under you
Bottom out you grip the rail of the board for the drop
Or catch air, skip and do an awkward asymmetrical yogi pose
Gray whale fluke splashes next to you
Out of the sky fall all manners of bird plummets
Its an all you can eat buffet of shiny silver specked anchovy mackerels
Its is so loud – the chirping of hunger and digestion
Smells of fish throw up and guano paste
Terns diving for food in that very erratic fashion
They circle one way feint
Angle off another
Sudden drop, pierce the surface at speed
Precise trajectory fish strike!
Troupe swimming south, a family of cetaceans
Pause and play in the curls, kids stick alongside the adults
A lone soul bursts out of the water in all exhilaration
The rest steadily cruising, come up for breath, go down, then pop up some fifty feet away
Traveling at a good pace, no big hurry
Salt water feels and tastes like the womb; not that I drink it or actually remember
It just works its way up my orifices and lathers down my throat paddling or duck diving
On a wipeout it packs thick into the ear nose cavity, thick like grease in zerk nipples
The spray jangles loose the bulk in my respiratory system, I blow out one nostril then the other
Shake shake caboose droplets behind the toot toot of the steam engine nasal snorts
Bits of brown foam, algae and jellyfish surround me
You push the detritus out of the way
Lob a few lumps or give it a shove
Tuck a piece of trash in your wrist sleeve for later, theres a lil crab holding onto the flotsam
Splash at the yuck yuck some more why it keeps following me in the rip, get away!
The surface of the sea
Texture is corduroy checks and swirly spirals
Light exposure is tapestry of folded sheen fingers touching and holding radioactive hands
Shape is the klamath sierra and coastal ranges in miniature all moving
Motion is a series of shoulder rolls and pelvic twists in undulating slow motion
Sometimes it looks like crap but once you get in the water it is magic
A mixture of: Sleeping on the sofa and the hot cold of the steamy spring and mountain river
On the muddy dirt floor of the gladiator arena waiting for the tiger to enter
Drifting on the orange yellow purple hues of the setting sun
Blissed out flying on angel wings on the silky liquid mirror of the planet
Interpersonal interactions
Dude tells me after I get crushed pulling in
‘That wave was as wide as it was tall!’
I see a member of the brigade
Stroking in earnest for a hump of a gem
Yell GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A dark rolling curtain of an unexpectedly large wave stands up from way outside the horizon
Theres a scramble and a panic as it looms larger and fills your field of view
And its too late
Curl thump thud explosion and foam bounce
Everyone in the line up dives, ditches, and goes for a bubble tumble hahaha
Weekend sunny first day of the fall season surfline calls it good
Everybody, everybody is out – your mom, her cousin, uncle bob, old timer joe, kevin the kook
Packed with bros and sisses on center every 2-3 meters, relentless jostling
You paddle for a wave, uggghhhhhh
One guy right in front of you, another at three o’clock, two more down the line ditching boards
Early morning sun rising out of the east lights up the sea with white blinding glare
Hard to see anything when I take a right hand wave
Bumpity bumpity I run a guy over cause I did not see him and he did not move
Sorry sorry! He is cussing rubbing his shoulder and I broke off a fin
Sigh feel bad, offer him a free shot at me on the beach but glad he declines
I used to see this dude who drove a VW Van, out in the water at Sloat Boulevard
Never talked to him much, many surfers are more the silent type, maybe a head nod
Then, didn’t see him for a decade or two hmmmm
The other day there he was, its been like thirty years! Dor!!
He was the same, riding a big wide OB gun thing on the outer bar, still stalking bulls
Always fun to run into a surfer friend outside of the watery ritual
Sometimes you don’t recognize them at all without the wetsuit and sun blocked face
Theres no set pattern as to their regular day to day appearance
Although folks imagine them as a flip flop wearing tattered bum of sorts
These days its anything but, as if they were actually a seal incognito secret agent you’d never suspect…. except the burnt face and shoulders sometimes gives it away
IN RELATION TO HUMAN CULTURE
Its free anybody can go in the ocean
No admission no membership no premium
No advanced reservation or online registration needed
Everyone is a vip or a nobody
Who cares, for sure not the seal carcass rolling around headless at the tideline
Its relatively inexpensive to start this particular hobby
A hand me down wetsuit
A $100 board and your are in
Hope you have a ride of some kind or good public transportation
Work hard so you can buy wax or a leash once in a while, very reasonable money outlay
You find your own style
Follow your own line
Sing your own song of the sea
theres no right or wrong way to ride
You make your own tradition and commitment, its all you, just go
Surfline says its poor
You have the whole ocean to yourself laughing
Yup its slip slop slap blowing in your face
Scattered smatterings of inconsequential unformed non unidirectional catch me if you cans
But again, the playground is vast and deep beyond despair or happiness there is only awe
You can go anytime, any window will do
No hours of operation no holidays no closed sign
On moonlit nights or a dusk sunset overhead stars emerging
Crack of dawn with two hundred seagulls sitting on the sands and ravens just close enough
At noon in a fog bank, folks are fishing for stripers with sand crabs and kids are making castles that will be washed away
The watery pitch is not held in by fences nor rings, cages nor lines
Dont got no judges and refs, rules laws and regs, timers and whistles, cones and flags
There are no clues or symbols to ascertain rank, seniority, hierarchy or who came in first
‘Time in’ is a storm connecting sea and sky with electric branches of humid charge
‘Time out’ is falling rain drops kissing the peaks of waves in between sets
The energy is pure and unfiltered
True and direct, bears little resemblance to what we humans sometimes cook up on land
Storm wind and water swell moving side to side up and down
As they say, puts things into perspective
Essential elements, planetary motion, just a bobbing cork in the infinite cauldron
The sound of water closing and falling
Sounds like the continuous crash and derailment of a train, but without the metallic screeching
Envelops me as if I were in the midst of a frog choir by a pond way out of the city limits
The persistent background bass and accordion folds of air and water mutually squeezing
I fall asleep to this sort of a lullaby
She is scary and intimidating and beautiful and gnarly and glorious
All at the same time
There something very attractive about the whole package – an all powerful matriarchal life form
I am humbled by the forces at work, grateful to gently slide atop the rhythmic slope
Repeating the old trapper hunter fisherman refrain – mother nature always wins
She don’t baby your sucking lips, pamper your ego
She don’t serve you with a smile, pay you compliments or kiss your ass
She is a conscious presence, forever the present in the form of a rolling wave
And you are subsumed within her
At home in the embryonic fluid of the queen
Mission Azul 