There’s always something else out there to find. That’s why we love riding waves. Photo: Nimity Boronia
Surfing is all about uncertainty. That feeling of taking a risk, that leap of faith every time I jump into the ocean, that paddle out among things unseen – all of these make surfing very special.
-Shaun Tomson
Every so often, without any real sense of logic or reason, I abruptly turn and paddle away from one of the breaks where I surf – even if it is working. Typically, I’ve seen or imagined the fleeting image of a wave in the distance, and the glimpse triggers a force deep inside: I have to go. Explore. Search. Find something new hidden amid the rocky reef and the tide’s undulations.
Sometimes a wave leaps up from under a curtain of fog, and the sensation of finding a new ride, alone and away from the pack, is pure magic. I gambled, and I scored. Far more often, though, I paddle fruitlessly, spinning like a record on a grass-is-always-greener loop, ultimately circling back to where I started. Yet, the risk is worth it for the feeling it provides. As Tomson says: the risk of the search and the indescribable feeling it provides is the soul of surfing.
To say that surfing is all about ‘The Search” is a familiar song, a Rip Curl motto meant to sell board shorts. A cliché. But there is something besides a preference for empty waves that pushes me to discover, some innate force that speaks to what surfing once was and what it still can be. Surfing is defined by exploration, but you don’t need to go back in time or take a surf trip to a far-off island to embrace that spirit and find a wave of your own.
Granted, my safe paddle away from the local lineup down my street is far tamer than the quests many more prolific surfers undertake. I’ve never had the good fortune of driving down exotic, empty coastlines on swell-spotting sojourns — though I wish I had. I can’t speak to global journeys in search of the next Nazare, of chasing giants across the continents, because I’m not a big-wave surfer. But I don’t think that makes the impulse to seek out new waves and new experiences any different.
Perhaps my tendency to paddle away from the pack and down the beach is part of a deep-seated link to the past, when surfing was an offbeat activity practiced by outsiders, and virgin surf spots were conquered and then passed down by word of mouth. We can all track the explosive plot of surfing in the 1950s and ’60s, when TV and film popularized the sport and thrust it into the cultural zeitgeist and commercial spotlight. Surfing has been commodified, of course, as everything eventually is, but at the same time surfers still embody adventure and innovation by continually pushing the sport further.
As the years have passed, surfers have embodied the spirit of adventure and innovation by riding spots like Jaws, Maverick’s and Nazare, and exploring places as unconventional as the freezing waters of Antarctica. Innovation is still alive and well in myriad way, from Ben Gravy’s antics to board designs that veer from asymmetrical to uniquely retro. Sometimes, though, between surf forecasts in our pockets and packed lineups, it can feel as though the average surfer these days traded a sense of risk and adventure for ease and accessibility.
If it sometimes feels as though surfing has lost some of its original outlaw essence, but you can’t just take off on a surf trip to the island of undiscovered waves, I have a suggestion for you: go paddle out at your local beach, and then simply paddle away.
This idea of searching out something new, regardless of how insignificant or consequential, does not only belong to surfing. I started snowboarding when I was 10 or 11, so around 1990. At the small East Coast hill where I learned, we had to pass a test — literally slink through some cones and be able to stop — to get a “badge” that showed skiers that we had a right to the mountain. People cautioned us to go slow and “not interrupt the skiers,” but we did the opposite. We bombed into the woods and ollied off every roller, trying to capture the feeling of skateboarding. We hit up forbidden banks and trees and stumps in the woods and more than once, fell into icy waters of a hidden riverbank in exchange for the thrill of new terrain that would’ve gone unridden. Battering and bruising our young knees and backs while gutting our boards, we found the risk entirely worth it.
The essence of surfing, too, is the call of wild, the car packed with friends and adrenaline on the dawn of a big swell, the lonely paddle to a new, gnarly peak. The true spirit of surfing is the total opposite of capitalism and clothing sales, cams and crowds. Deep inside the heart of every surfer there’s a primal instinct driving us to search out new waves, whether the destination is a little beach break that only works once a week, or a reef break halfway across the world that can kill you with its thorny gaze. We may forget this sentiment sometimes, but we’ll never lose it. Searching out the unknown is a sentiment woven into the polyurethane core of our beings.
Regardless of the number of surfers, the aisles of foam boards at Costco, the relentless commercialization and commodification of what is, to many of us, simply a way of life — we can still connect to one of surfing’s core tenets. We can still manifest the vibe of Tom Curren’s spirited logo-free surf in 1991. We can still paddle down the shore, away from the noise in search of a new ride, a new risk, a new leap of faith.
