Waves are the Recipe: Be Surf

I can feel it on a cellular level when I need the ocean.

“Salt water heals,” my buddy Ollie said this summer. Age nine, budding surfer, she gets it.

I met Maddie at the beach today. She was soaking up as much heat as possible in the car, having been out for hours already. “It’s more fun than it looks,” she said. “Promise.”

And it was. 1-2 feet with random sets skewing on the 2+ sets and just plain CLEAN. No wind, sun was out in full force for the most part, and very few people out.

We started near Rest’s but the current sneakily pulled us north until we were nearly on top of B.H. It was ok. It was good.

The water. It really feels like the Source for me. It IS the source for me. It wipes everything clean, it refills the well, it does all the things that water does so well.

My mind is constantly whirring, like so many people’s, but when you’re surfing, even on a small day, you’re just looking at the waves, assessing, wondering “Will it go?”, wondering “Am I too far in?” wondering “Is this going to toss me?” These visceral in the moment thoughts crowd out those Dark Wolf thoughts that love to roam and lope and tear things up.

Waves are the recipe. Waves force you to be in the present. So all those questions, and then the paddle, and then you’re up and all you’re doing is riding the face and trying to throw something maybe, or just trying to wedge in and chill, and then some sort of energy geyser erupts and you’re just thinking “Weeeeeeeee!” Suddenly Dark Wolf is gone and you’re free.

Drawing the Ocean: A Perfect and Strange Morning

The other day, an early morning, before work, I jumped out at Long Sands.

It was a weird day — it seemingly looked a lot cleaner from the shore but paddling out, it was disorganized and strange. It was one of those days where you feel like perfect waves are going by all around you and you somehow keep winding up in the wrong spot. So I settled. I’ll just sit and bob right here, I thought. I stayed around where I was, paddled for what came there and I was grateful for it.

The sun was shining, and there were only a few people out, and I felt so so good, so filled with gratitude and joy. And that’s when I had the experience I’d never had before, of the ocean coming to me. Out of nowhere, perfect rolling glassy waves came through, right where I was sitting, right to me. It felt purposeful and it felt like whatever vibrations had rippled off me, off those feelings of joy and gratitude and acceptance had nudged the water to throw some perfect ones towards me.

It was a perfect and strange morning.

To Read a Wave: Assessing Close Outs, Rights, Lefts

When I first started surfing, I recall that the surfing veterans around me astounded me with their ability to judge waves. “This one’s going to close out—watch,” they’d say. And I would believe them and watch, astounded, as they called it right nearly every time. I looked for clues in the water that would allow me to see what they were seeing but I couldn’t. “This one’s a right,” they’d say. Or, “This one’s a left.” And again, I would watch the approaching liquid energy and think how the hell? when the wave would roll through and they’d be right. What sort of blessed divination were they gifted with? I wondered. It went on this way for years, this proven prophecy followed by my impressed headscratching.

Then last year, I started surfing nearly every day. I’d been surfing a lot before that, or what I considered a lot, but it was 2018-2019 that the obsession really took root and I prioritized it over essentially everything else in my life. Drive, zip, wax, run to water. Drive, zip, wax, run to water. Like a repeating sequence in a movie.

And last week it dawned on me that I was calling waves, without even thinking about it. I was sitting in the pocket and I realized I now know, mostly, when to go left and when to go right. I now could pull off a wave that I realized was going to close out, or not even paddle for it to start. It was a moment of sunshine. I realized that the year of being in the waves, watching the waves—it had given me that secret, invisible knowledge that the other surfers had so shocked me with. It was a 10,000 hours moment, one for which the only guidance and curriculum was this: Surf as many hours as possible.

It’s the only way.