new surf dialogue

Authors note: I’m going to post this thing in segments, some of which contain blog posts that you’ve maybe already read. You have been warned…

“Riding waves daily or consistently, and taking it seriously enough, you run the risk of becoming totally surf stoked. Once you experience this phenomenon, you can lose connection with anything and everything except your peers down on the beach, and the values the waves and the ocean force upon you, whether you like it or not[1].” Nat Young[2]

“…I can’t help feeling there’s something happening and things are not going to stay the same. New philosophies are taking hold. There is a great deal of change accruing in certain segments of the sport, and I hope you want the same things I want, freedom to live and ride nature’s waves, without the oppressive hangup of the mad insane complex that runs the world and this sick, sick war.

Things are going to change drastically in the next year or so, for all of us whether we like it or not. Maybe a few will go forward and make it a better world.

These are incredible times.

Thank God for a few free waves.”  Miki Dora, 1968

 

March 19^th, 2010 Milton, New Zealand

You Should have been here yesterday…

            The southwesterlies have been howling for several days. Heavy cold winds that are common in the southern South Island of New Zealand, but are no friend to surfers, not when they are blowing 30-40 knots day in and day out. A solid four meter swell accompanied the winds, charging up from Antarctic waters. The ocean around Dunedin has been a beautiful mess of energy to gaze upon, but unfit for wave riding. That’s all right though, because I’ve been holed up in a Brighton beach trailer park cottage, putting together my thesis, and Christine and I are now up in the hills stacking wood, building goat shelters, and tending to bee hives while sharing the home of Debra and Jack through the volunteer program, Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF). The surf was decent enough when we first rolled into town, ahead of the winds and swell, and Christine has kept me energized and balanced with guided afternoon yoga sessions, and epic evening Uno matches. New weather patterns are on their way as well, and tomorrow, we’ll be heading back down to the coast.  

In Bruce Brown’s, The Endless Summer, the boys are greeted throughout their travels in Australia with the cheeky refrain, “you guys really missed it, you should have been here yesterday.” As we’ve made our way down the New Zealand coast lines in a multi-dimensional zig-zag wave search for the past two months, Brown’s timeless narrative has unremittingly captured the reality of our surf travel experience in Kiwi country, with a subtle twist. Instead of missing out on good waves by a day or two, we’ve been politely informed by the local surf tribes, “man, you should have been here last year, the waves have been shite for months!” The first night on the Dunedin coast, I was surfing across the street from our camp out, stoked to have found a fun waist high right peaking off the rocks and peeling into a little cove. Only two other guys were out, both local lifesavers on their paddleboards. We were taking turns, hooting each other into our respective wave glides and chatting about the local surf.

“You really lucked out bro, this is the best this wave has been in ages. The past year has been the worst surf, in, well, the worst in my whole life really.”

The el Niño weather pattern hasn’t been kind to New Zealand in regards to wave quality, but that’s ok. We’ve had our good days, and we didn’t travel thousands and thousands of miles in a ‘traditional’ perfect wave-centric mind frame; a mode of surf travel that The Endless Summer is credited with creating in a divine inspirational fashion, as surfers and surf medias would pledge allegiance to that search after the movie’s release, to trail blaze the worlds beaches in Romantic, neo-colonial fashion; to run from the status quo and crowded surf back home and codify their travel as a harmonious union of mother nature, man and board.  

            Today, surf culture is a globalized body, with millions and millions of men, women and children stoked out of their minds via the riding of wave crafts which are an ever growing number of sizes and shapes, on waves of the same diversity, and in locations from southern California to Alaska, Ceylon to South Africa, Sweden to Sumatra. While many of us can testify that “surfing saved my life,” and that it is an individual pursuit that brings the world together through travel and the growing surf tourism industry, surfing isn’t without its dark side or free from the madness that accompanies growth and development. As the world shrinks through hyper-connective technology and transportation advances, and as surfing’s popularity grows, a perfect swell of opportunity is on the horizon to re-think The Endless Summer, to critically look at the past and present so the future looks shoulder high and glassy.

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[1] Quoted from Kampion.

[2] Young is an Australian surfer, 1966 world champ, surf historian/author, and credited with being a chief instigator of the shortboard revolution of the late 60’s early 70’s.