Because it just feels so good. Photo: Reed Naliboff
An unexpected moment occurred when, a few weeks ago, I paddled out alongside a younger buddy. As he jumped on his Mini-Simmons, he remarked that he started surfing “about five years ago.”
“What about you?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what to say.
In some ways, I’ve been surfing since I was in my early 20s, and I’m now in my late 40s (yeah, adding that “late” was hard).
On the other hand, maybe I’ve only truly been surfing for five years, too.
Five years ago, I moved to Southern California from New England.
Living in Boston, I’d surf when I could, crisscrossing New England. Some of those icy winter sessions are among my most memorable. But it wasn’t a priority — it was just one of the many things I loved to do, and often was frustrated by. I didn’t grow up surfing. I didn’t grow up spending every day on the beach. Back then, I don’t think I would have called myself a surfer.
Living in California for most of the last five years fundamentally changed me. Through the ups and downs of our constant apartment switches and zig-zagging hauls across the country, surfing became my constant companion. My wife was swept up by work and school and surfing was an escape, a friend, a way to both challenge, and measure, myself. Riding waves was not just something to talk about at the bar with new friends. It was the heartbeat through which our little neighborhood lived.
As surfing became a focal point, I was forced to adjust. When we first moved, I was a long-distance runner. I figured I’d just throw a daily surf into the mix and be fine. Not possible. I went through a shitload of growing pains. My back twisted. My neck bent. I got frustrated and almost quit. But as the months passed, there were glimmers of hope in the shining tides at dawn, the clean rides at sunset and all the different people I met on the sand. I found a spot down the street where I loved to surf and kept on showing up.
Sitting here overlooking the flat Atlantic on a visit back East, I recall a dream I had last night about surfing, which happens often these days. I am partially lost without riding waves; without the feeling it provides, the creative outlet, the confidence, the camaraderie. The early mornings on the beach bumping into other surfers who are just as stoked to be up and out in the gray morning, eyeing the swell in a wetsuit still soaked from the night before.
I’m not an expert surfer, and I’m not a beginner. I am, however, a completely different surfer than I used to be; really, than I ever imagined I’d be. I catch quality waves now and ride them with confidence and sometimes, a little swagger. I experiment with different boards and long for bigger swells, tracking the models, trying to summon a storm into existence.
I’m a five-year surfer, then.
Or perhaps my current state is the culmination of all of the fragmented years of surfing, all the bits and pieces that fit together like Legos and find me grabbing the rail on a steep left or gathering speed to throw spray — sometimes right before I pitch back into the Pacific.
We don’t become ourselves — the surfers we are, the people we are — all at once. We spend years collecting pieces of experience and memory until we suddenly find ourselves perched in the lineup, eyeing down an outside set.
That day my friend and I traded wave after glassy wave, hooting at each other during a never-ending season of swell. Afterwards, my buddy texted that it was a “magical session.”
Does it matter how long we’ve surfed, when we know we’ll do it until we die? As long as surfing has already given us more than we ever thought it could?
Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe it’s, will I ever live without surfing again? I certainly hope not.
