thoughts about surfing

from green to blue

I got into surfing early this year when I ensconced myself on a little surf island called Siargao. I’m currently on Lombok island, picking it up again and I’m very much a beginner but the moment I rode my first wave in the April sun I fell in love.

It is rare for me to like a sport so quickly. But everything about surfing is Homeric: the line up of surfers sitting on boards looking out in the same direction, a religion seeking your god on a far horizon. Waiting for what? Something nameless in the water, rising up to meet you.

When you identify an oncoming wave and paddle with abandon to catch that one millisecond when the roar of the swell engulfs you right before you stand up, the all-consuming rage and thrust and spirit condensed into one small moment, before. Before the thing you have been waiting for happens, and you find yourself standing on moving ground.

You have found congruence. Everything, somehow, fit together. A capricious benevolence, again and again, found all over the world at all times but never any less magnificent than before: the feeling of catching a wave is unlike anything else. When your body forgets solid ground and begins to learn how to live upon the ever-motion. When your legs tremble at the sheer audacity of using the great ocean as your plaything. A superlative joy to match the strength of the sea, a movement fearsome upon itself.

And then: the Sisyphean paddle back out. Your arms soft and weak, but the water of the sea laps upon your skin and the salt edifies your body. Rinse and repeat. The waves like an irregular heartbeat of the earth, ever forthcoming, always different. You surf until the water turns pink and yellow, oil stains of a sunset. Until everything floats in the gloam of the beach. There is nothing to be done but to stand upon seafoam, the hours on the water providential to itself. And then the moon breathes in, and the tides shift, and you turn towards the shore.

@emhanneyWhen the ocean mimics the mountains 💫 #ocean #sunset #dreamy #mountains #travel

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