The author. Photo: Courtesy SG
Editor’s Note: The following is from an excerpt of Sam George’s latest book, Child of Storms: A Surfing Memoir in Progress.
Riding up in the chrome and mirrored Embassy Suites elevator, I figured I still had a couple of minutes to get my story straight. Or at least the story I was going to pitch to the eminent sports-performance hypnotherapist who waited in his sixth-floor suite for the editor of SURFER magazine to arrive, ostensibly to conduct an interview on how said therapy might benefit surfers. The aforementioned therapist’s specialty was baseball, more specifically the hitting of a baseball, that particular component of the game apparently fraught with gaping psychological pitfalls. This would explain why I was currently in Southern California’s Orange County, in this particular Embassy Suites located on State College Boulevard, just a wide parking lot’s distance from Anaheim’s Angel Stadium; big-league sluggers, especially, needing to keep their emotional support close. Exactly what a middle-aged, former competitive surfer and surfing magazine editor was doing here was another question entirely.
It was a question immediately raised in our initial phone conversation by the Therapist (with respect to his professional standing, I’ll leave him unnamed), who, having little exposure to surfing, let alone surfing-performance paradigms, was somewhat skeptical of the efficacy of applying his area of expertise to dynamic endeavors outside the batter’s box. I assured him that even a general explanation of the benefits of sports-performance hypnotherapy would help for an upcoming feature about how the element of fear might affect surfing performance, specifically in bigger waves. He agreed to give me a half hour.
Now, leaning against the back wall of the Anaheim Embassy Suite’s mirrored elevator, watching the illuminated numbers tick by on the way to the sixth floor, all I could think about was what I hadn’t told him. Which was that I had no intention of actually writing a feature about of the application of sports-performance hypnotherapy to big-wave surfing. No intention of writing anything at all about this visit.
Truth was, I needed help.
A few seconds after my third knock, the suite’s door swung smoothly open and I was met by a short, stocky man in his late thirties, bearded, wearing belted jeans and a tucked-in T-shirt, looking much more like a guy you’d see at an Arco gas station, checking the tie-downs on his contractor’s truck racks, than a therapist; thick forearms, firm handshake. He gestured to a comfortable chair opposite from where he took a seat, his back to a broad picture window through which I could see the very top of Angel Stadium’s famous “Big A” sign, 230 feet tall and tipped with a halo, and farther east, beyond the suburban-tract sprawl of Anaheim and Yorba Linda, the green swath of the Santa Ana Mountains. I remember thinking that, considering the subterfuge I had planned, it was better to be looking in this direction, away from the ocean, which lies 16 miles to the west; I wouldn’t want her to see me like this.
After getting introductions taken care of, I asked a few innocuous questions about his process with the baseball players. Like, whether or not the view of the stadium affected their state of mind during sessions (“Curtains closed, definitely.”) or, with his mid-season suite situated so close to the diamond, did any dash over for a quick touchup between innings. He chuckled indulgently, then, in a completely different tone, asked, “So, what can I do for you? Again, I’m not entirely sure what sort of scenario a surfer might present that I could offer help with.”
Was he leading the “patient?” I couldn’t tell. But I was here, he was listening, and there really was no turning back at this point.
“Let’s say I came to you with what for many surfers is a pretty common problem,” I said. “Hypothetically.”
“Okay,” he said, steepling his hands under his chin.
“When out in bigger surf, let’s say, 15 to 20 feet, most surfers will admit they hate getting caught inside. And if they’re completely honest, will admit that they’re actually scared of getting caught inside.”
“Caught inside?” he asked.
“That’s when a bigger-than-average wave suddenly looms up outside the regular lineup, catching you out of position.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, thoughtfully. “Okay, so let me ask you this. If you anthropomorphized this wave, made it human, what would it be doing to cause this fear? In the surfers you’re talking about, I mean.”
I pondered for a couple moments before answering, wanting to get this right.
“It would be putting a powerful hand on their head,” I said. “And holding it underwater against their will.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Nobody likes being held underwater against their will. It’s a perfectly normal, perfectly human fear. Nothing complicated about that.”
“It gets pretty complicated when you’re a surfer,” I said. “Especially one with my years of experience.”
He nodded his head, very obviously taking note of my use of the first-person singular-possessive determiner. Paused for a moment, considering, then settled back in his chair.
“So, when did you first experience this fear?” he asked.
And this is what I told him.
It was the spring of 1968, middle of the school week at Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary, and as I fidgeted at my desk in Mrs. Denman’s sixth-grade classroom, an announcement came over the intercom:
“Sam George, please report to the office. Sam George, report to the office.”
This I did, and briskly. Couldn’t figure what I’d done this time, but anything was better than math class. Reporting to the front desk, however, I was surprised to see my dad, looking crisp and very official in his tropical khakis and senior officer’s cap, chatting with the attendance lady. A parent at school is never good, and there was my best friend, Mark Varney, standing next to my father, looking at me as if for some explanation. I had none.
“Commander George is here to take you boys to your appointment,” the attendance lady said. “Mark, make sure to bring your parents’ signed note tomorrow.”
We walked out into the bright Hawaiian sunlight, dutifully following my dad to the school parking lot. It was around 10 a.m.; morning in Pearl Harbor – base traffic had died down, and the harsh croaks of the black-and-yellow mynah birds had little competition save for the faint growl of a lawnmower beyond a distant row of banyan trees. It was weird to be heading off campus at this hour, and we got all the way to the car before my dad said anything.
“Hey, boys,” he said, and smiling, which was a relief. “I heard on the radio that the surf was up on the North Shore. Thought we might drive out there and check it out. Maybe catch a few.”
At that moment, I was prouder to be my father’s son than at any other time in my life.
We headed home, loaded up the Pontiac station wagon with three boards on the roof, and drove west from Aiea on the Kamehameha Highway. Our route rolled through the light-industrial factory towns of Waimalu and Pearl City before climbing north through Waipio, past Wheeler Air Force Base, Schofield Army barracks, and on to Wahiawa.
Sunset has a way of intimidating, no matter what the size is.
Situated at 1,000 feet on the Leilehua Plateau, a high saddle separating O’ahu’s two prominent mountain ranges — Wai’anae to the west and Ko’olau to the east — the town of Wahiawa was founded in the late 1800s as the center of the island’s burgeoning pineapple industry, and even now, as the Kam Highway wound its way through the vast, uniform rows of spiky fruit, the Dole company logo was still a major presence.
In earlier times, however, this region was used primarily by prominent O’ahu chiefs, who found the broad, open plateau a perfect training ground for their warriors, an appropriate lineage for anyone driving through Wahiawa with surfboards tied to the roof. Because when descending the plateau to do watery battle on the island’s North Shore, it’s from here that you get the first glimpse of that coastline; Wahiawa translates roughly to “the place of noise,” apparently for the sound of the thundering winter surf piling up on offshore reefs, audible here, some nine miles distant, in the time before factories, highways, towns, and military bases.
The surf was certainly up this day, judging by the amount of whitewater boiling over the fringing reefs off the sleepy sugarcane factory town of Hale’iwa. This became even more evident as the Pontiac made its way across the iconic Anahulu River Bridge and headed farther north, the view from gaps in the thick keawe brush and between salt-weathered, vertically planked plantation beach houses revealing waves far bigger than any of us had ever seen in person. Laniakea, Chun’s Reef, Waimea Bay…we passed a flickering panorama of some of the most famous surf spots on Earth on the way to our chosen destination of Sunset Beach, one of the North Shore’s premier, and most fearsome, breaks.
The waves at Sunset this day looked at least 15 to 18-feet high. Fifteen-to-eighteen feet, and unloading all the latent energy built up during the long march from their North Pacific low-pressure birthplace to this particular reef complex, their path unimpeded by any landmass, archipelago, or continental shelf. Claimed, for this reason (and by those who study these sorts of things), to be the ocean’s most powerful breaking waves. This is the surf spot my dad had taken me and Mark out of school to “Check out, and maybe catch a few.” None of us had ever ridden a wave over waist high.
“Looks pretty good out there,” said my dad, shielding his eyes against the noonday sun with a flat palm. “Let’s hit the surf.”
I looked at Mark, who just looked back at me and shrugged, starting to unstrap our boards from the roof. I looked at my dad, who had already begun slipping into his blue, chevron-striped surf trunks. Back out at the waves, where the surf boomed like a heavy howitzer barrage. Back to my dad.
“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. “It looks pretty big out there. Maybe we should go to Mākaha.”
Mākaha being a prominent surf spot on O’ahu’s west side — historically, O’ahu’s original big-wave spot, offering waves reaching up to 30 feet on giant northwest swells. However, I’d read enough surf magazines and books to know that, on a day like today, Mākaha would be breaking roughly a third the size of Sunset Beach.
“Mākaha might be more our speed,” I continued, trying out a phrase I’d heard my dad often use.
He just looked over, stood up, adjusted his trunks, and then said something to me that he had never once, ever, said before. Not boarding a ship to sail across the Atlantic or skiing in Valberg or descending into the Vesuvius crater; not hunting with him and his friends for pintails and Canadian geese in the rice fields of Imperial Valley, or mule deer in mountains of Utah or dove on the Mexican ranchos; not teaching me to do a one-and-a-half off the springboard, or to run and jump off our patio roof into our backyard pool in El Centro or facing down an angry rattlesnake, grizzly bear, or playground bully. No, it had to be here; it had to be now. In front of my friend, no less.
“C’mon,” he said. “What are you, some kind of pansy?”
I knew I’d been stung. I knew I was right. But I knew that I’d have to go out. I slipped off my T-shirt, grabbed my board, and followed my dad and Mark down the beach and into the water…
Purchase your copy of Child of Storms: A Surfing Memoir In Progress here.
