Photo: Silas Baisch/Unsplash
The Spanish words for shark kept bubbling up in my mind; tiburon. I floated, half-submerged on my board at the top of the point, watching the sunset behind a rock buttress while pedaling my feet underwater for balance.
I mouthed the word while scanning the dimming horizon. My eyes were shifty in the low light, watching for any bulge of water sizable enough to break over the rocks under me. At this moment, I was wrestling with the eternal and universal struggle of the surfer: catching that last wave in. The decision I had made ten minutes prior was telling. I paddled into a small and gutless wave, floundering the opportunity for a good ride soon after. It wasn’t satisfying. Facing a long paddle in, I decided to wait for “one more wave.”
Those three words belong in quotations because they are everything to a surfer. It is critical to end a session on a good one. To me, it’s often just a conversation of efficiency. Why paddle in when I can just surf in? But it’s also a product of pride, knowing the last ride can define a session. And once we move down that road, “one more wave” quickly devolves to “one last good one.”
So here I was, sitting just a hundred yards from dry land in El Salvador during twilight. I glanced back toward the palm tree-covered hillside and saw the surf camp illuminated at its base. Every minute that grew darker, I was more committed to waiting for a wave. It wasn’t that I was too far offshore or in any clear and present danger, I was a stubborn silhouette, cursing at my luck and insistent on the cooperation of nature. I imagined a long line off the point, peeling off as I cruised down the face, soul arching in the dark. I pictured spray lit by the rising moon as I let my hand drift over the feathering lip. Even in my fantasies, I was being reasonable, simply asking for a decent waist-high wave to appear and line up along the point. Was this too much to ask?
“El tigre,” I consciously pronounced, wondering if I could identify the shark species if I had to. I was very aware by this point that the few other surfers I’d been sharing a lineup with had long since paddled in. I mouthed it again and imagined having to yell it to shore. I looked at the thatched canopies lining the rocky shoreline where a man named Geraldo had been set up with a cooler of raw oysters and beers earlier that afternoon. He had offered my brother and I a beer just the other day, but even he was long gone now.
For a second, I considered taking the shortcut exit over the rock point. That was significantly closer than the black sand beach at least a hundred yards further down. I circled my feet in the water, felt the cuts on my feet smile with the motion, and thought better of it. I wasn’t uncomfortable otherwise. The water was probably 80 degrees, so I wasn’t even chilly in the dying light. I tried not to think about how comfortable that water temperature might be for sharks. For the past few days, while drinking coffee in the morning, I had seen fishermen slowly paddle out a few hundred yards offshore in what looked to be an inner tube with a janky seat rigged on it. They had no rods, just a spool of fishing line rolled on a wooden peg. I would see them paddle out in the early morning and sit through the mid-afternoon, pulling in fish. I imagined them and their confidence with their asses sitting in the water, baiting their lines and pulling in bloody fish. I was fine. But the fishermen weren’t sitting out there at sunset.
The lull continued. My body above the water was still. I would tell myself to start paddling in one moment then see a wave coming on the horizon the next. Inevitably, I had to wait. Then I’d watch it plow straight over the rocks without breaking, leaving me to sit and stare at flatwater again. I looked down at the water’s surface and imagined every boil and movement underneath. Every moment was a hair away from action, and every second of indecision was a decision to stay put. I knew that just a few hundred yards away on shore, my dad and brothers were sitting at the camp drinking pilsners in the goddamn palapa and wondering what the fuck I was still doing in the water.
Eventually, something sizable popped up in the darkness. My body was electrified and I felt no room for error as I wheeled around and started paddling. As I started down the face and felt it take the board, I popped to my feet and felt no thrill. Ironically, surfing for perceived survival sure can take the joy out of riding a wave. So I rode my way into shore conservatively, nothing like the wave in I’d imagined. I shuffled my feet forward on the board when I felt the stomach-dropping feeling of the wave dying. I could have wept bitterly. I fell dramatically off the board into familiar blackness. No triumphant soul arch. No spray sent into the darkness.
When I pulled myself back onto my board, I let out a sigh, swallowed my pride, and started the long paddle down the point. There was relief in my defeat and I felt better as soon as I started moving. Stroking through the water, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was fine. There would be more surf tomorrow. I saw the glimmer of moonlight off the ocean and glanced over my shoulder for a hint of whitewater. Maybe just one more wave.
