The Wave


I’ve been surfing for about three and half years now. I “came across” from The Other Side of having been a seakayaker, at one time making a living as a seakayak guide and catching waves in a variety of shapes and sizes of kayaks. I also used to be a fisherman by trade, and spent years bouncing around on the ocean in all sorts of conditions, from the paradisiac, swimming around the boat in glassy water reflecting the orange of a balmy warm day’s sunset, to the catastrophic, getting shipwrecked in the middle of the night in a storm of epic proportions, in heaving boiling seas with walls of ferocious black water towering high above the bridge of the boat, and us running away in front of the storm for dear life. In the space of two weeks, fourteen days, seven ships went down on that ocean, filled up with water, broken in two by the mindless violence of the waves and wind, skulldragged down to the bottom. We were the only crew that survived. Of the other six, only one other person was ever found. He washed up on a remote beach three weeks later, with his hand entangled in the ropes of a liferaft. It hadn’t done him much good.

   In those three and a half years I’ve caught waves big, medium and small, exhilarating and memorable, and mediocre and forgettable. I have surfed with dolphins, whales, sharks, stingrays and turtles, and have seen dolphins launch themselves off the top of waves in groups of six all lined up perfectly together, with massive smiles plastered over their faces.

   But today I saw something I have never seen before.

   The day started out rough, with locally generated windswell from the north, never a really good recipe. I got bashed around, held under and farted on by rollers of malevolence and with murder in their eyes, and saw some of my mates get ejected from their boards and catapulted high above the foam. I got a few waves here and there, and, finding the frontline, the first point of resistance, the place where waves roll into the bay from the ocean, stand up and break on your head with all the roaring fury of a thousand miles of windblown chase across the vast wild open space, too much to handle, I had drifted in to the inside of the bay, where the waves are smaller, but, today, better formed and shaped.

   I finally made a few good drops and rode along some nice troughs, curling away pleasantly in front of me and beneath my feet. Very nice, and very enjoyable.

   Then, as I was paddling back up again from a nice little ride, I was almost back to where I wanted to be, to sit sideways and face the east, scanning the waves for shape, size, and amenability to being ridden, when a roller stood up in front of me, bubbling white at the top and spilling over already. I didn’t really think much of it, and I hadn’t planned on going for a wave just yet, not quite having got back to where I wanted to be, but something gave me pause; and, without taking the time to think about it, size it up or calculate anything much at all, in a split second decision that owen nothing at all to rationale or reason, but was motivated purely by instinct and opportunism – there’s a wave, might as well go for it – I turned around and paddled for it.

   I felt the surge of the wave lift up my tail and, reacting on fast-twitch habit alone, I jumped up. And slid down the side of a perfect slope into what must, by fluke, chance and fortune, have been the exact right, just perfect spot to be in.

   Because as I slid into the drop, skidded at the bottom and turned right, facing down the line, I rolled into one little trough, bounced back out of it, bumped over another one, and landed right at the foot of the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Because right there, in front of me and beside me, the wave rose up again, after having broken, and reformed into a glorious, beautiful wall of green and blue liquid glory, rising up head high, standing at a perfect angle, and I leaned sideways into the wall, pitching at the exact same angle the water was tilting at, and all of a sudden I found myself moving alongside of that rolling wall of emerald green, shimmering blue, golden turquoise, and the rays of the sun fell through it and illuminated the yellow and dun sand of the ocean floor below me, with a clump of seagrass passing below me in slow motion, and I felt a swooping sensation in my gut as I slowly moved sideways with that water, sweeping majestically in tune, in sync and in harmony with every spec of ocean next to me. And time stood still and I looked at the sheer magnificence, awe, splendour and breathtaking beauty of that wave in front of me, beside me, under me, behind me, and I forgot about everything else. I forgot about breathing, or maintaining a heartbeat, or where my feet were, or what my hands were doing, or whether I should be shifting my balance, or whether I was moving or not; and all I could see was the glory and beauty of that wave in front of me, spectacular and splendid and magnificent.

   And I have never seen anything like it before, nor have I ever felt the same way.

   I am a physical person, and I love surfing for the sheer joy I get from hooning down a face at a hundred miles an hour, from the butterflies I get when I take a drop and my gut rises up to beat in the back of my throat; and from moving on the board and with the board to the rhythm of the pulse of the ocean; from cutting left and carving right, and rising up alongside of the face of the wave and shooting back down it with the gained gravity of the climb; from enjoying the poetry in motion that comes from dancing on the ocean. And I have spent hours and days and weeks and months and years trying to learn one technique or another in my quest to master this skill, this infuriatingly, maddeningly frustratingly difficult and ever-changing thing to do; and that’s without even starting to think about the social aspect of it, which is incredibly important to me and crucial to my enjoyment of my time on the water; my entire social life consists of communing with people out here on the water, wild and free and open and outside, breathing in the feel and scent and smell and essence of the sea.

   But all that is nothing, irrelevant and non-existent compared to the beauty of that one wave in that one heart-stopping moment in time. The sweeping, broadacre expansion of perfection.

   If I never get another wave in my entire life I will never regret it, and I will never forget it. 

 


 

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