cray for surf

in ,

I'm crazy for surfing. 

My friend and I discovered we both wanted to become surfers while we were bouldering in Everett in April. Now we've surfed ten times in Massachusetts and we're planning to surf through the winter.  

People think we're crazy. Our coworkers, our family, our friends. 

"You can surf in New England?" they ask.  

Yep, we say, and we refuse to admit there's anything odd about it. There really isn't, actually--once you're a surfer, you look at a puddle and you wonder if you can surf it.  Here in Mass, we have a whole coast to play with.  

It's not like we're in Montana. And now that I'm crazy for surf and I watch every movie, YouTube and web clip about surfing ever, I've discovered you CAN surf in Montana. River surfing. But I'm really more of a coastal surfer right now. 

My husband thinks I'm crazy. I walk around quoting a .99 cent Trader Joe's card I gave him last year: Nothing else matters when surf's up! I holler it out then I throw out my hands and wiggle my hips like I'm on a board.   

He thinks it's a phase, like the flower farm I was going to start (which I still plan on starting someday!) but I tell him, "It's not a phase, it's a lifestyle."

Being There

in

“Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention. 
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.”
--Mary Oliver, poet

Every day, I bike the path from my house to the train station. I wink at the blue chicory root flowers--the buds which open in the morning and have started to close and sleep at night when I bike passed them on the way home. I check on the progress of the nesting swan. She's been keeping her softball-sized eggs close; she's built a large mat of straw like a queen upon which she sits. She's hardly moved from it in weeks. The reeds of the pond have started growing up around her from the depths of the water. Pretty soon, there will only be wisps of white feather visible in the gaps between the tall beams of leafy green.

Coming to know a place, its colors, its smells in the rain, its smells in the heat, its whispers, creaks and whoops. Witnessing this, holding it in my heart and being there. Being quiet, listening, seeing, hearing.