in my heart of hearts, i think and feel i'm one of these gloriously bravado filled, prime of life surfstuds—stupidly drunk upon my sense of immortality—waiting watchfully for a sip of ocean energy. reality bitterly smacks me upside the head—wake up middle-age, overfedgirl! you've waited too long and put your energies into the wrong areas.
i've come to the realization the best i may do, in regards to surfing, would be to purchase a stint at a well-publicized chick surf camp—most likely in FLA—and maybe hit a 2' swell or two. call it a fantasy realized and scratch it off of my 43things.com. and that's if i can convince my ever patient husband that i must abandon the family in this pursuit to overcome deep seated water-oriented fears while answering my adrenalin lust. learning to surf, i worry, could be the a very satisfying drink of water that i'm pouring done the drain. even so, i still continue to pour. there are children to raise. there is money to raise to apply to the children to raise. there is a career, a vineyard, a husband. i live within this mountainous terrain. i live far, far from the coast of life.
yet, i hunt and feast upon images of teahupoo.
pronounced cho-pu, or, in english: broken skulls. teahupoo, located of the southeast end of french polynesia's tahiti. the chopes is a left-breaking reef but the outer reef also creates right breaks that those with boards must be cautious of when paddling out. the reef delivers consistent barrel waves best summed up in this really cool article:
ex–pro surfer and writer Matt Warshaw observes, “Waves as small as three feet can be ridden at Teahupoo, and at six feet it still has a reasonable shape and demeanor. Above eight feet, however, Teahupoo gets exponentially stronger, thicker, rounder, and more malevolent: each ride begins with a vertical entry; each wave transforms into a thick-walled cavern, which in turn collapses with enough force to send shock waves running through the still water of a nearby channel.”i think maura quotes one of the best descriptions as to why i'm taken with surfing:
...author Daniel Duane writes in Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast, “The climber never quite penetrates the mountain, the hiker remains trapped in the visual prison, but the surfer physically penetrates the heart of the ocean’s energy—and this is in no sense sentimentality—stands wet in its substance, pushed by its drive inside the kinetic vortex. Even riding a river, one rides a medium itself moved by gravity, likewise with a sailboard or on skis. Until someone figures out how to ride sound or light, surfing will remain the only way to ride energy.”how long has it been since you've read a really dynamic paragraph like above?
let me ride energy, sound and light!
1 comment:
Ocean...Big, Bad, Beautiful. As an overfed middle age white male I rarely wade deeper than my kneecaps. But occasionally I venture out cautiously fearful of riptides, sharks and jellyfish. But it is beautiful. Thanks for blogging, I'll be back...soon I hope.
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