new surf dialogue

We are several hours into our flight out of Los Angeles to Fiji, en route to New Zealand. Bad weather was heading for southern California where we had been visiting Christine’s family, a convenient high time to seek out fresh rays of sunshine and culture. Thoughts come to me as we cruise thousands and thousands of feet above the Pacific Ocean. Across from me, a short haired pudge of an American woman loudly reads bible stories to her son, whilst everyone else tries to sleep their way across the international date line aboard a cramped coach class Air Pacific airliner . I had been sleeping myself, and began to drift into a dream state of Revelations and images of el Diablo in abstract 666 configurations. I slowly came out of my 747 slumber, the airplane dark and calm, except for the ray of light illuminating the biblical horror stories to my left. The thoughts come from the readings I’ve been submerged in for the past year. Surf history readings by the men and women who have paved the way for the curious and stoked surfers looking for the origins and paths surf culture has been spawned from.
Right now, the thoughts that come to me are inspired by the woman and young boy across the way from me. A couple hundred years ago, Christian missionaries made long and arduous pilgrimages across this sea to the many land masses of Polynesia. Many of these islands were ones that Polynesian explorers had themselves colonized several hundred years before Europeans had “discovered” these areas and began their tumultuous relationships with the many different cultures that were thriving in places now known as Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji and into the far southern reaches of New Zealand; among many, many others. After the explorers and tradesmen established ports of call, Christians boarded the wooden vessels and set out to enlighten and transform the uncivilized dark skinned savages to properly clothed, god fearing purveyors of righteousness and morality. In places such as Hawaii, the art of surf riding, which was a central component to the spiritual and social structures of the Hawaiian culture, would be strongly discouraged by the missionary groups for its heathen and immoral influence on the native population, going as far as promising eternal damnation in the pits of hell for surfing on the Sabbath1. Surf journalist and historian Drew Kampion, in his book Stoked: A History of Surf Culture explains, “Not only did these missionaries impose a strict Protestant paradigm on an exuberant people while diseases destroyed their bodies, but they confined them to modest attire, forced them to speak in a new tongue, and discouraged them from casual sex, gambling, and playing in the ocean.” He goes on to explain that, “Surfing’s association with nakedness, sexuality, wagering, shameless exuberance, informality, ignorant joy, and freedom were counterproductive to the designs of the church fathers, who, curiously, wound up owning most of the land in the Islands.” The many diseases that accompanied the Europeans had intensely weakened the societies they came in contact with as the populations were decimated, making the demands of the new colonizers the seemingly solitary handle to grasp. I imagine that while staring into the eyes of death, even if they are the same demonic eyes that brought the horrific plague to that community, promised salvation through conversion could sound like the only way out of the hell that so rapidly took control of their bodies and minds of these traumatized souls.
However, Hawaiian culture is alive and so is surf culture. Millions of people have taken to the art on many different levels, and Christians have pulled their heads out in certain communities, having formed extensive surfing for Jesus groups themselves. As I sit here amongst hundreds of other dream state travelers, on a jumbo jet manned by a crew of Fijian flight attendants, listening to the tales of hellfire for children, I am thankful and not a bit worried about any eternal suffering being brought down upon me as I paddle into my next wave. Surf culture and Hawaiian culture survived because of their beauty and strength; because of their relevance and importance to the great balancing act of civilization. New Zealand is just a few hours away. The sun will soon rise, and the new stories will come. Stay tuned. Manaka.