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surfing

    SURFING

    We Live in a Stream of Moments

    Seeking the place where there is room only for Now

    By

    Surfer
    Inside a wave, the whole world disappears. It has to. (Photo Cody DeGroff)

    The moment: a slice of time of uncertain length, liberated. A sampling of the river, defined not by length but by its content and significance. The internet says a moment can be 90 seconds long. I don’t think it is so easily boxed in. Moments stretch, bend, and turn back on themselves. Time is relative; a moment can feel like, and therefore be, forever.

    We live in a stream of moments, overlapping like the scales of a fish. As you read this, you are in one, or perhaps many. Moments are abundant, but so many pass, not fully experienced, like food eaten in a hurry, chewed too fast and swallowed, its depth of flavor and complexity not tasted.

    In order to function and survive, we depend on analyzing the past and planning the future. Our time-conscious brain is one of our greatest assets as a species. It is a calculator, constantly processing information. It chatters endlessly, like a catbird at dusk, babbling to itself about what has been and what might be. It is distracting and exhausting.

    Our ability to plan actions over time has made us a very accomplished creature. Our ability to mull over and analyze the past allows us to learn. But this attention to other times must be borrowed from somewhere. It must be withdrawn from Now.

    My own mind tends to occupy a multitude of different times at any moment. I can scarcely get through a shower without thinking about rearranging my house plants, or if I am saving enough in my retirement account to afford to live when I’m 73, or if I’ll even live that long, or if I should paint my front door light blue or burnt sienna.

    My brain loves to marinate in the past, in soothing baths of guilt and what-ifs, of past joys and achievements. Always borrowing essence from this moment.

    And so we drive ourselves back into the moment — into an undefined nugget of time in which all else melts away and we exist in full attention to our selves and our surroundings. We seek a place where the future cannot afford to exist and the past is of no importance; where there is room only for Now.

    We seek freedom from the time we have created, in pursuits that immerse us, for a moment, in complete presence. It is the work of musicians and Zen monks. It is in the making and loving of art. We find it in skiing, mountain climbing, meditation, bird watching, running, sky diving, reading, singing, dancing, sex, drugs, religion. And surfing.

    As the dancer spins, her mind is so focused it is empty. The chattering mind is quiet and gives over to the body, to a surrender so complete it is commanding. As the climber pulls himself up the rock face to reach the next hand hold, a thousand feet of air below, the innate terror of death forces him into a moment of full and true existence, the grit on the stone crystalized in vibrant detail, the knuckles acting free of any thought. Absolute presence.

    For surfers, the moment is in the wave. As a wave is caught and the surfer drops into a long, deep, arching bottom turn, the whole world disappears. It has to. There is no space for taxes, oil changes, or lost loves. All that exists is a human being and a collapsing ocean wave. Instinct screams: flee, preserve yourself! This is all terribly wrong, dangerous and ridiculous.

    And something greater steps in, takes the chattering mind in a gentle hold, wraps it in its loving arms, and whispers, “Quiet, little one. Be still.” The wave begins to hollow and form a great swirling liquid tube. The surfer finds herself in the most fluid and dynamic place in the world — a place that exists only in this moment. And there it is. Inside stands a human, being.

     

     

    SURFING

    Nyepi, the Day of Silent Danger

    A lesson in social responsibility on the island of Bali

    By

    We knew the waves were good. The surf reports showed it. There was a big south swell sweeping in from the Indian Ocean onto the reefs to the west. The wind was a light offshore.

    We knew, too, that the waves were completely empty. It was Nyepi Day on Bali. Not a single surfer would be in the water. Everyone on the island was to stay inside from sunrise until dawn the following day. The island’s survival depended on it.

    Nyepi is a day of silence, observed in Balinese Hinduism, for reflection, restraint, and meditation. Anything unnecessary is prohibited. The entire island shuts down and goes quiet. Businesses close. The airport suspends flights. The streets, usually vibrant and chaotic, are silent. The only movement outside is the chickens, scratching leaf litter, and cats, slinking along the tops of ornate stone walls. There is no music, no dancing, no eating, no burning of incense. Lighting fires is forbidden. Everyone must stay inside. The people of Bali, the island itself, hang in the balance.

    On Nyepi Day, evil spirits descend on the island in search of a place and a people to inhabit. Only by making the island appear uninhabited will the spirits pass the island by.

    The temptation to sneak out and take the goat path to the ocean tugged at our sleeves. We wanted to surf perfect, empty waves. But the threat of our selfishness bringing ruin to the entire island held us back. Besides, there was the Pecalang: the Balinese spiritual police, patrolling the streets in search of offenders.

    The day before Nyepi, Ogoh Ogoh Day, a massive celebration takes place. A parade draws the attention of the evil spirits, to wake them from wherever they hide. Gigantic puppets depicting them are carried through the streets. They are fiery red and eggplant purple, their eyes bulging, faces contorted. Some have eight arms and three heads. They represent temptations, vices, corruption — some new and superficial, some deep and ancient. One carries a cell phone and a selfie stick. Some are twisted in acts of lust. Others are thieves or two-faced liars.

    Giant puppets
    Giant puppets depicting monsters and evil spirits parade through the villages of Bali on the day before Nyepi and are burned that night. (Photo Kai Potter)

    Babi Guling, a roast suckling pig, is carved and served. Arak, a homemade rice alcohol, flows like rainwater. It is carried in gasoline cans, burns like gasoline going down, and will give you the worst hangover you can imagine. When the spirits come the following day, looking for a people to infect with their evils, they find an empty island. The old bait and switch.

    The silence of Nyepi Day is an act of collective social cooperation and responsibility. No one wants to spend the entire day inside, refraining from the pleasures of daily life. But they do it. They do it for their neighbors, for their families, for the magical island they call home.

    My friends and I stayed in. We read. We drank beer. We counted pearls collected by the owner of the house we rented. From the windows we watched chickens scratching beneath the trees, kitties lounging in the shade, the sunlight and the blue sky.

    A shadow passed. Was it a bird? We lay with our sweaty backs against the cool tile floor and told stories. Someone moved, and the suction of his sweaty back against the tile made a loud farting noise. We fell apart laughing and spent the next hour squishing our backs against the tile, cracking up at the variety of fart sounds we could make.

    The next morning, we rose at dawn and set off down the goat path. The island began to glow in the gentlest of morning light. The birds sang in the trees. Everyone must have stayed in. The evil spirits had passed. The island was safe. The people had all done their part.

    SURFING

    After the Shipwrecks, Joy

    Is it right to feel so happy in the very place where sadness dwelled?

    By

    Surfer Brendan McCray
    After hurricane Sandy, Brendan McCray rode the storm’s power. (Photo Trevor Murphy)

    Often, when I am sitting out in the ocean, snug in my thick wetsuit, warm against the ripping wind and salt spray, I think about all the souls that have been lost here. Over the centuries, more than one thousand ships have been wrecked between Wellfleet and Truro.

    I think of the sadness and death caused by the very sandbars and waves I surf.

    Ships laden with supplies and young men, pushed in by the relentless winds of lashing nor’easters and massive storm swells, smashed on the sandbars. Their cargo and their crews spilled into the sea. Thousands of souls pulled beneath the black water, only yards from the beach. Dragged down by the rip and the waves and the brutal cold. The entire crew nearly always died. There was no surviving the cold, the dark, the crushing waves, and that ripping wind.

    The place where we surf today, that narrow strip where the waves stand and heave over shallow sandbars, is an ocean graveyard.

    Schooner John S. Parker
    At Snow Library in Orleans, the photo that inspired this essay documents the 1901 wreck of the schooner John S. Parker. (Photo Kai Potter)

    In the early 1800s, there were an average of two shipwrecks a month here. After nearly every winter storm, a ship would be found, pushed up on a sandbar, listing hard, hull broken open, sails and rigging torn to ribbons and draped over the wreckage. The Outer Cape’s inhabitants would come to collect what had washed ashore. Necessities and luxuries amidst the bodies of sailors slumped in the wrack line.

    Our beautiful beaches are places of death, like historic battlegrounds.

    A thousand ships. Thousands of sailors. Young men with a sense of adventure, a hunger for life. Or desperate men, signed on to provide for a wife and children. Hopeful. Alive. Caught in a storm. Terrified. Dragged down. Frozen. Dead.

    And now, on the days following one of our savage winter storms, you will see, in that very strip of ocean, surfers playing in the water. In what was the most feared space over the centuries, a place prayed over, you will now hear the sounds of joy. It is now a place of happiness.

    Is this OK?

    SURFING

    Localism Is Surfing’s Dark Side

    A protective instinct that unites us and can drive us apart

    By

    You’ve heard a lot about the wholesome, soulful side of surfing. That’s what draws most of us in. It is the current that runs strongest through surfing. It is the side that I choose to focus on. Yet, as with all things human, our less wholesome tendencies find a way in. We always bring ourselves along wherever we go.

    Good waves are hard to come by. Perfect waves even more so. A good wave is rare and highly sought after, and so it is a valuable thing. Like other rare and valuable things, good waves are regulated and fiercely protected. In the surfing world, that complex system of enforcement is called localism.

    Localism is the expression of a protective instinct: a wave kept secret, a spot closely guarded, a form of ownership exerted over certain waves or stretches of coastline, a break regulated by a group of surfers who lay claim to it.

    It manifests in a number of ways, some subtle, some overt. It is on display in messages left at surf spots: “Locals Only” scrawled across a sign. It can be something as simple as being “vibed out” when in the water — being ignored or disregarded, given dismissive looks, made to feel unwelcome. It is something you encounter nearly anytime you surf somewhere that is not your home break.

    You may park at a new spot, surf, and return to find your windows caked in surf wax, some colorful phrase written on your car. It’s somebody’s way of saying, “You’re not welcome. Don’t come back.”

    I’ve seen a cinder block thrown through a windshield, tires slashed, furious arguments in the water, escalating to blows. Grown men treading water, engaged in naval battles, throwing punches without any ground to stand on. Whitewater and froth flying, blood thinned by seawater. Boards taken and their fins stomped clean off. When tensions run high, someone invites the other to the beach and there are full-on fistfights and brawls right there at the water’s edge. Busted boards, broken bones, and shattered egos. It’s not all hippies holding hands and cheering each other on.

    In some cases, for highly sought after or treacherous waves, gangs have taken control. Pipeline, located on Oahu’s North Shore, is one of the most famous waves in the world. Everyone wants to surf it. Not everyone can or should. In 2001, in response to overcrowding and dangerous behavior in the water, a group of Hawaiians formed a gang called the Wolf Pack. They were hard-charging locals, all trained in jiu-jitsu, who tightly regulated the wave. They decided who could surf there and who could not. There were many accounts of violent fights on the beaches around Pipeline during those years.

    Another well-known surf gang was the “Bra Boys” of Maroubra, Australia. They took over a place called Cape Solander, the end of which has a mean and serious wave, and renamed it “Ours.” They had ties to organized crime in their home city and became the focus of a 2007 documentary narrated by Russell Crow, Bra Boys: Blood Is Thicker Than Water. Their members have the Maroubra zip code tattooed on their backs and “My Brothers Keeper” across their chests.

    The simple, pure act of riding waves, in the hands of men, cherished for its beauty, corrupted in its service.

    Localism exists on the Cape. It tends to show up in subtle form, more as a safety concern than as a point of pride and posturing. Because Cape surfers are usually well-traveled, they know how it feels to be the other, the outsider. They tend to have a more welcoming attitude. Still, Cape surfers are private and protective of their home break. They ask photographers not to reveal where their pictures are taken. If people start to get a little too comfortable or entitled in the lineup, a reminder is given.

    The Cape, because of its geography and exposure, tends to self regulate. This place provides its own protection. It gets good. Really good. But it is fickle: cold, remote, hard to predict, nearly impossible to get it at its best even for those who live here.

    Localism is deeply ingrained in surf culture and history. The same tribalism that bonds surfers as a whole, practiced on a smaller scale, allows for division and for the creation of the other. It speaks of the most basic tendencies that have allowed us, as humans, to survive. And of the very basic self-serving instincts that have driven us apart.

    Even here there is no escaping our simple animal nature. Protect what feeds you so that the resources remain, so that I may feed mine.

     

    SURFING

    Like a Big Family

    The collective joy of watching someone catch his first wave

    By

    The waves were perfect for learning to surf. Knee to waist high, soft and gentle, breaking slowly over an old flat reef now buried in fine white sand. The water was a clear turquoise so pure and bright it appeared to be the source of its own light.We sat on the sand in the shade of a sea almond tree, our gazes far out over the reef, over the glimmering turquoise, watching figures glide along the sparkling faces of peeling waves.

    We had spent the morning surfing and playing in the warm water, swimming with sea turtles and telling stories. Tim, one of only a few in our group who did not surf, jumped up and declared he was going to try to catch a wave. He had never surfed before. He grabbed the longboard that had been lying in the sand and walked into the water. We all sat up to watch, excited, hopeful, in suspense.

    A group of us from the Cape had come together on the island of Barbados to attend the wedding of two friends. We had traveled there to witness and support the creation of a new family. The wedding was held on the edge of the sea, on a hilltop of tall grass that rolled in sweeping waves in the wind. A hundred feet below, the ocean crashed against the rocks, the white water wearing the same orange cast as the towering clouds overhead. It’s a color, a light, that the island of Barbados creates. The same color worn by the bridesmaids. We watched our friends make a promise to one another. When they said, “I do,” and kissed, a wave of joy, love, hope, and excitement washed over us. It was a moment of shared emotion at witnessing the happiness of others we love. We stood and cheered through our tears.

    Tim waded into the turquoise, pushed off into a glide, and paddled out. He got to where the waves met water shallow enough to make them break, and he waited. We all waited, too, hope bubbling in our chests. With each attempt he made, we would collectively tense, lean a few inches forward, our eyes wide, and we would cheer and scream for him. Each wave was watched closely.

    Emma, an experienced surfer and teacher, could not contain herself. She jumped in the water and swam out to him. She stayed beside him in the shallow water, offering tips and encouragement on catching waves. Another missed wave, another nose dive. And then a wave came, Emma called him in, he paddled, we all sat up tall, eyes round. He jumped to his feet, faltered, caught himself, and slid along the glassy face of the wave. The beach erupted in screams and hoots and laughter. A shared joy spread through everyone on the beach seeing a loved one succeed.

    After Tim caught that wave and rode along the water for the first time, Sophie, a native of the Cape, said something that struck a deep chord. She has a way of stating things with uninhibited clarity.

    “I love you guys,” she said. “Surfers — you’re so supportive of each other and get so excited for one another. You’re like a big family.”

    The feeling that comes from watching someone catch his first wave is of overwhelming excitement, a child-pure happiness that grows in your chest and floods through your body, driven by the pressure of its own energy. It is not unique to surfing. It comes with watching someone finally understand something they have struggled with. Seeing someone you love find fulfillment. Witnessing two people find and create love and promise to always do so. It is something we feel for those we love, for our family.

     

    SURFING

    At Home in a Portuguese Surf Town

    The tide and the wind are the same in any language

    By

    Beach in Portugal
    On the southern coast of Portugal. (Photo Kai Potter)

    The sun is warm on my shoulders. The salt is starting to pinch the skin at the corners of my eyes as it dries. A small white cup of coffee with a tiny round handle sits on the table. The steam from the cup dances in the low angle of the midmorning sun. The croissant on my plate is surrounded by shed bits of its flaky, golden skin. More flakes crackle and fall with each bite. I always gather them up at the end between pinched fingers and eat them. Aside from the toasted ends, they’re my favorite part.

    A figure walks into the café with an ease that comes only from familiarity. “I know this space and I feel at home here,” says his body language. The movement, the casual presence, the worn but neat clothing feel familiar to me. I feel like I know this person. I nearly reach out for a handshake and say hi. Then I remember I am 3,000 miles from home, in a small town in the south of Portugal, and I don’t know anyone here. I smile and give a nod. Something is recognized, and the nod and smile are returned.

    There is a commonality in every surf town I have ever been to. They are also all unique and different. They all have a feel and color and flavor of their own, but there is something familiar in them all. The leaves on trees are different. The buildings have angles and colors that are new. The coast has its own geologic history, revealing itself in layers and shapes new to my eyes. But something is known.

    The characters who walk the sidewalks of these towns have a style and gait that I know. It is the language spoken with hands and body that feels familiar. It is the clothing that is chosen more for comfort and ease than to impress. It is the hair styled by salt water and sweatshirts being pulled over heads. It is an unspoken shared love of something fleeting and ethereal. It is a feeling of connection to strangers that serves as common ground. It gives new places and people a feeling of home.

    The morning I walked into the café the man behind the counter was someone I had never before seen. But his smile was welcoming. When we walked in, he could tell we had come from an early morning surf. The comfortable exhaustion in our shoulders and satisfied smiles on our faces told of a morning in the water. This was clear to the man, because he knew the feeling himself. No words were exchanged on the subject, only a smile of appreciation for the feeling. He was a surfer. This was his place. He had built this space to support a life style, to have a schedule that could bend and flex with the waves. Surfing was important enough to him that he shaped his life to work around his need to surf. This place was closed when the waves were good.

    This café, with pictures of local waves on the walls printed on giant canvases and homemade wooden tables and benches, was a meeting point. It was where people would collect to talk story and laugh. Every place has one. Its characters were different, unknown to me, but somehow so familiar.

    On the front steps of the café a bunch of salty people sat and talked. They were blond kids, young travelers, and crusty locals. In their hands were skateboards and egg sandwiches, coffees and beers. They spoke Dutch and Portuguese, Spanish and French. No matter the language, the topic of discussion was clear. The tide and the swell direction and the wind are the same in any language. They told stories of waves surfed that morning and of their hopes for what the waves would do that afternoon. They related to each other in the same way my group of friends does at the top of the dune after a morning in the water.

    As we left the café, the leaves on the trees looked a little less foreign. The walls and doorways of the houses along the street looked a little more welcoming. The owner of the café gave us a smile and a nod as we moved through the small crowd, and suddenly 3,000 miles didn’t feel so far.

    ECONOMY

    Surf Shops Suffer Effects of Shark Tales

    Local business owners bemoan the media frenzy over great white danger

    By

    Some people, like Shawn Vecchione, are tired of talking about sharks. The constant chatter about great whites caused Vecchione, who owns Vec Surfboards in Orleans, to close the retail side of his business this summer after 10 years.

    “It got to a point where everyone wanted to talk about sharks,” Vecchione said. “Mentally I wasn’t here. My heart wasn’t in the retail side of it.”

    Vecchione still handcrafts surfboards at his Orleans shop for customers by appointment. He said about 90 percent of the boards he makes are for off-Cape orders.

    Even though Vecchione is tired of the discussion, he knows it isn’t going away anytime soon.

    He said he’s gotten advice from shark scientist Greg Skomal about public perceptions of the problem but the frenzy around the sharks became too much for him.

    He’s not alone.

    Olaf Valli, who owns Sickday Surf Shop in Wellfleet, is tired of the media fever surrounding sharks, too.

    “The reality of the danger is not nearly as impactful as the coverage of it,” said Valli.

    Unlike Vecchione, Valli chose to keep his shop open, but he saw a sharp drop in wetsuit and surfboard sales this past summer. He said business was down by $20,000 in board sales and rentals in July 2019 compared to July 2018.

    Valli understands that being a smart business owner means responding to changing circumstances.

    “We’re trying to figure out how we can adapt,” he said. “The rentals were big, and those have really dropped significantly. We’re trying to figure out how to bring in new products that are not surfing related.”

    Valli chose to suspend his surf school with lessons at ocean beaches in Wellfleet because of concern that no real preventative measures were being taken for the safety of people in the water.

    Scott Panuczak of Orleans surfing Nauset Beach. (Photo Ryan Chartrand)

    “It feels like Wellfleet or the state just doesn’t care,” he said. “So once we can show that we do care and there are things in place to keep people safe, then people will be more confident to get in the water again.”

    Emma Herrick vacations in Orleans during the summer and taught surf lessons with Cape Cod Surf Camp at Nauset Beach for five years before the town shut down the lessons last summer.

    During the previous season in 2018, Herrick said, the surf camp was busy even though there were frequent shark sightings.

    “We got pulled out of the water at least twice a week,” she said. “Some people thought it was cool and some people got spooked.”

    One family even returned for two more lessons after being called out of the water in their first trip.

    If the surf school is reinstated at Nauset Beach, Herrick said, she would be willing to teach lessons there again — but only at low tide.

    “I don’t think people should stop swimming, but just be more cognizant of what’s going on and understand the risks,” she said.

    Both Herrick and Valli worry about the signs installed by towns and the National Seashore that depict a large image of a great white shark.

    “[It’s] valid to put the warnings out but they are grossly misrepresenting the danger that’s there,” Valli said. He believes that rip tides and strong currents are more likely to cause harm.

    Both Valli and Vecchione said they had noticed a drop in the number of people surfing. More people are turning to stand-up paddle boarding to get a better view of what’s beneath them.

    Coverage Is ‘a Joke’

    Matt and Jamie Rivers own the Pump House Surf Shop in Orleans. Matt continued to surf regularly this past summer along with a group of diehard surfers who aren’t going to stop.

    Like Vecchione and Valli, the Riverses aren’t pleased with media coverage of sharks.

    “It’s a joke,” Matt Rivers said of the national media’s portrayal of sharks on Cape Cod.

    When a shark sighting is confirmed at a beach, the standard protocol for lifeguards and beach staff is to get everyone out of the water and close swimming for one hour. If a confirmed sighting is not made again within an hour, then people can get back in the water.

    But some local and national media outlets post headlines throughout the summer with misleading information, suggesting an entire beach is closed for an indefinite amount of time. That’s not great for the surf shop business.

    “We’re still selling a fair amount of surfboards,” Matt Rivers said. But he knows that shark stories will continue to be a threat to his business.

    “This is a big learning year,” Jamie Rivers said. She is also a member of the Eastham Select Board. “The towns are doing what we can.”

    The highly anticipated Woods Hole Group shark mitigation study was released last month but didn’t provide definitive recommendations for a single strategy to decrease the risk of shark attacks.

    Ryan Garcia heads for the water at Cahoon Hollow in Wellfleet. (Photo Molly Newman)

    Jamie said the towns ultimately don’t have a lot of control because any major changes would have to go through the state and federal governments.

    But whatever the towns do should be done in unison.

    “We have to provide a unified approach to the state so that it’s consistent and confident,” she said.

    Some companies pitched shark deterrent or detection products at community forums last fall and winter. Sickday and Vec Surfboards did carry products from companies like Shark Shield, Sharkbanz, and RPELA at a reduced cost for locals, but the Pump House chose not to sell those products.

    “Our customers come to us because of our product knowledge and I don’t feel comfortable handing [those products] out,” Jamie Rivers said.

    She said that they don’t discourage others from selling or using the products but she feels like the products are not fully proven and not a guarantee of safety.

    Vecchione and Valli agreed that the products are no guarantee of safety but don’t see them doing any harm.

    “Whenever there’s big change, there’s big opportunity,” Matt Rivers said. “There’s potential for growth as long as we’re willing to try and find it.”

    surfing

    The Whale: Enlightenment on a Sand Bar

    Dissolving the line between flesh and water

    By

    The alarm always comes too early. An anxious dream cut short of its unpleasant conclusion. The body knows that at any moment the sound will come, and so it is tense. My alarm is the sound of a harp. But at 4 a.m., even the instrument of the angels can seem harsh.

    I wake up and become aware of myself, the weight of my resting body, the warmth that means I am alive. I take a few deep breaths to wake myself and I imagine the waves as I hope they will be. My heart rate rises and the blood starts moving into all my organs. Of course, I must get up. I love this. The mind must convince its comfort-seeking body to go out and do its will so that it can flush itself with all the juices of happiness and excitement and the feeling of being alive.

    I drive in the dark to a friend’s house. We spoke the day before about going on a local surf hunt. There is a sand bar that formed and caught our attention. An island of sand, in existence only for a day, or perhaps a week, that looked like it had a great potential to make a fun wave. It would require very specific conditions and it seemed we had gotten lucky. Today was the day to check it out. We met in his driveway.

    Dawn’s early light for surfers on the back shore. (Photo Teresa Parker)

    Early mornings encourage quiet interaction. There is a feeling of restrained excitement, unspoken hopes, an understanding of possible disappointment that will come without blame, and there is quiet. Wordless hellos are spoken with the body only. Cups of coffee held in hand. Warm. Gear is loaded quickly and without sound into the truck bed. Hats and boots. Dry-bags. It is raining.

    We pull onto the highway and drive. The orange dash lights give form to the things inside the truck. A knee made round by the glow. A ring on a finger almost sharp with its clarity. Street signs reflected on the wet road are elongated blurs. We park at a beach lot and begin the long walk. It is dark still. The air itself seems dark, as though not for a lack of light but because the air itself is a thick, dark purple. The beach is cold. The wind is steady. In the dark we can see the lines of waves running along the sand bar.

    As it gets lighter, we surf. We focus on our waves, on the technical aspects of our surfing. I see my friends surf and know they see me and despite my greatest efforts, the ego chirps a little when I succeed. A selfish tendency finding its way into an act of purity. And then, from the shore, I see it. And my sense of self blurs and softens a little.

    It is a cloud of billowing flesh drifting in the tide. It looks like a mass of silk fabric dumped over the decks of a ship into the sea. Bolts of tender pink and purple tangled and turned in on itself. Thin sheets drifting out across the surface. Thick folds moving in the more persistent currents. The surface a delicate fray of silk threads dancing in the ripples. All this draped over the massive framework of an ancient spine. This body had been developed over millions of years to swim, and now, even in death, it swims. The dead whale’s spine and mass rises and falls with the same fluid motion of the waves.

    I am drawn in. As repulsive and rotten as it is, it is in the ocean, being washed clean as quickly as it breaks down. I walk into the water, up to my chest. I touch it. Soft. Cold as the ocean. The body of this whale, once an individual, arguably with a sense of self and consciousness, now dissolving into the sea. No clean defining edges. No skin to contain and separate it from the world around it. The line between flesh and water now indefinite. A seamless blending into its surroundings. The mind awakens to this. This sense of the self as separate from all that surrounds. The self is an idea. A belief.

    Surfing now feels different. Important. But for different reasons than before. For the simplicity and purity of riding on the water. More honest and true in that it serves to excite the very particles we are made of. The sense of separation from our surroundings no longer so clean and sure. The universe made conscious of itself, with a responsibility to elevate itself. To draw the excitement, energy, and life from the little peeling waves and give it right back to its source. To shed it right back into the water from where it came.

    The silk cloud drifts down the beach with the incoming tide. Birds stand on its billowing folds and pull at the reddest parts, tipping their heads back and swallowing. The seals swim along the beach in large families, faces pointed proudly toward their headings. We all catch another wave, feeling the energy of the ocean push us along, feeling the edges of ourselves less defined and more connected to the world around us.

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