The Taoist’s say ‘Be like water’
My eyes feast on images of exotic and faraway places, drooling over spilling waves ridden by Mr. Known, I munch on the text, gorging my surfers platter, can I only aspire to reach this (seemingly) unattainable spread as set out in this menu? Will I ever truly tuck into a juicy Indonesian barrel or carve off the lip like a pro?
Am I doomed to imbibe Neptune’s juice, guppy guzzling, as I crash into the mush or get wiped out proper, after finally making it out to the line up through wall after wall of white water? Is it too much, asking of myself to reach levels depicted so glossily in the magazines? As a surfer entering my second year of riding waves, I now think not.
Not that I have become super-capable through intensive practice, for I know that I am no uber-waterman, but gradual time afloat, sitting, waiting, watching, learning to paddle, reading the sets as they come through, I feel myself earning each ocean-based experience in an osmosis of this new, surfing life.
Every given chance sees me at locations around the UK coastline; ducking and diving, paddling for the sweet spots, I realise that I am no longer an overgrown grom, I am a surfer now, surfing is what I do, surfing is who I am.
As ever, one generally realises change a while after it has happened.
I am not a surfer because I can duck-dive (almost) or because I can now turn, or (just about) ride along the face of an unbroken wave. I am surfer because I have befriended the ocean and observed my surfing roots to enable a justified and legitimate clamber amongst its branches, in pursuit of my own surfing journey. My collection of tide-tables (essential basic knowledge required to equip oneself for the liquid goal) continues to hungrily consume space on my dash.
You see, since the marriage of myself and the art of surfing, I have scavenged every scrap of opportunity that has presented itself. Surfing has even conjured geographical enlightenment, England, Wales and Scotland all have their own stories to tell now, and reading ‘Surfer’s Path’ I am inspired to paddle a little further, perhaps all the way to California this year, and surf with the lovely cats from that community!
My surfing path is all consuming, perhaps I am simply expanding Greg Tindall’s words from the last ‘Agree to disagree’ article, ‘A Kook’s Confession’ which, in-part, inspired me to write this piece, and I trust you’ll agree that:
I surely mirror many minds by defining that surfing is about life itself.
Surfing encompasses all waves, messy, glassy, right, left, point, reef, closed out, overhead, knee high, or even mill pond. It’s about that point where all things ‘life’ merge to form our ideal conditions as we see them (the drop into, becomes the ocean). It could be that after six months, time off work finally arrives; yet the swell doesn’t. You may paddle out regardless and find yourself sitting on your board, in sunshine or rain, it doesn’t matter, for nature rewards, as you feel the wind in your hair, blowing away life’s rust, you taste the saline water as it mistily sprays past you, and contented, realise that just to be pupil and attend sea school is a good enough lesson for today.
Imagine this scene - during sea class, two sea bass merrily jump the front of your board as a wave is shared with four other surfers (three groms, one visiting German, et moi), with whom you do not just share the wave, you share the experience of being out there and doing it, of being stoked in the same ocean. The wave is ridden all the way to the shore and simultaneously, five rubber clad beings laugh because they have utter joy in their heart, and each one of them knows it in the other.
This is surfing.
Copyright © 2010 Thomas Ramwell.
