***
Febuary 10th, 2010
We’ve been staying at the Waipare Homestead for two weeks now, after following John and Mihi’s lead. The house, tucked off the beach amongst Norfolk pine, Moreton Figs and copious kawa-kawa was built in the 1880’s out of Kauri wood – almost head to toe. Scrubbs (as he is called by everyone – Don being his proper first name) bought this place two decades ago, and he and his wife Louia have been hosting WWOOFers for 16 years. Within minutes I was deep into conversations on Miki Dora, Michael Peterson, and my Re-Thinking the Endless Summer theories. “You know, of all the surfers that have come through here, I’ve never had conversations like this with them! And you’ve only been here an hour! The history man, that’s where its at!”
Scrubbs has been surfing since the early 1960’s and Louia, having grown up on the Mahia Peninsula – home to well known and well guarded waves, as well as being a Miki Dora hideout during the 1970’s- is a connoisseur of surf culture herself.
“Your doing you thesis on surf culture! Surf culture!” she exclaimed and giggled when I told them the purpose of my side of our New Zealand experience. “So you’re a bum! A good for nothing! Ha Ha! Come and help me dig a trench around Honey Lee’s tent outside. We need to keep her shit high and dry, right bro?”
The rain kept coming too. By morning, the roads where washed out all over the area, some rising 6 meters or more above their normal flow lines. A giant plum tree went down near the orchard that first night, and by the following afternoon, Christine and I, along with the two other WWOOFers – one from Florida who had been here for two months, and another from Germany who had spent time here four years ago and had just dropped by the previous day to say hello – were out in the intermittent downpours with chainsaws and branch wompers, hacking away at the felled debris.
The girls – Louia, her two daughters Honey Lee and Juliet, and Cassie, the Floridian WWOOFer all left for the AC/DC concert in Auckland a few days after Christine and I arrived. The two of us, along with Scrubbs, would spend the next several days locked into the dribbling beach break lefts and rights out the back door, and into conversations over the incredible history and perceptions that surfing has given to us. The mind altering lifestyle that becomes you, submerged in the ocean’s life lessons. Philosophy and politics and the madness of the human condition and spirit were passed around the dinner table each night. We hooted and hollered at our own surf movie screenings held in the living room. A viewing of The Endless Summer brought many of my idea’s back into perspective, and we cringed and cracked up at Bruce Brown’s horribly off-color imperialistic colonial comments about the “primitive” African’s that Mike Hynson and Robert August encountered during their search for the perfect wave. Thomas Campbell’s film ‘Sprout’ blew Scrubbs away with the embracing of boards long and short with abstract concaves, convexes and varied numbers of fins, and his generally brilliant artistic representation of the diversity of modern surf culture. However, in all the film’s beauty, filmed in exotic locations around the world, little attention is paid to the lives and livelihoods of the locals who call the exotic locales home.
We also worked around the yard, helping get the grounds ready for the next wedding being held here in a few weeks, and harvesting heaps of organic basil, lettuces and nastirsum flowers and leaves for nourishment.
After a fun morning session the night after viewing Sprout, Scrubbs stoke meter about to burst, Christine and I had laced up our boots and were heading out to attack the Plum tree and pick some avocados after the three of us had just finished a potato and egg brunch. “I reckon the waves are still looking pretty good; probably time for another session,” Scrubbs announced, having just been down to the water to survey the scene. I started to say, “oh yeah? Christine and I were about to get on that tree again…” and was quickly cut off by a moment of hysteria from Scrubbs, “Fuck work man, the waves are better than this morning! Lets have another session! That other shit isn’t going anywhere! Priorities man!” So, when in Rome…
Scrubbs continued to stoke us out with all his local knowledge of the area’s surf breaks. We took a ride up the hill for a surf check one morning, and based off the visual clues we could acquire from a vista where miles and miles of coast could be observed, he directed us to the right spot at the right time, and I finally scored some decent surf in New Zealand.
A few of our days this past week were also spent on a friend of Scrubbs vineyard, helping them prepare the vines for the nets to keep off the birds. The berries are filling with sugar, and we enjoyed the change of pace and hands on experience with the local wine culture. However, we are increasingly in tune with the fact that New Zealand is in no way the ‘100% Pure’ landscape that the tourism board sells to the world. “That’s a fucking scam isn’t it,” Scrubbs quickly replied when asked about the slogan, and then raising concerns and giving examples of how polluted New Zealand has become. Choppers saturate the local squash and corn fields with chemicals on a regular basis; one of them swooping across the neighbour’s fields while we plucked new growth off the vines, causing both Christine and I to worry and wonder. “We were rained on with those little white pellets just the other day from a copter,” Louia mentioned during one of our conversations, referring to 1080. “Fucking bastards.” One afternoon in Gisborne, we caught part of a documentary on the chemical 1080, which was playing on a sidewalked television outside a hippy store. It is used in New Zealand to kill the invasive possums, stoats, rats and other rodents, and a scary topic for biologists and environmentalists from around the world. The forestry practices have long been destroying the landscape too, as well as the cattle and sheep industry polluting and trampling the erosion prone hillsides and water ways, with signs up in all the campgrounds and holiday parks warning people to boil their water before drinking because of high bacteria contents.
Yesterday, we continued to plug away at the Plum tree, Christine going for an afternoon swim with Honey Lee and Juliet, me reading the through the stack of books on surf history and local folklore that Scrubbs had dug up for us. The sun has dried up the downpours and the road is waiting. Scrubbs and I hongi’ed and contact info was passed along to us; surf bros done south that would love to show us around. Off toward the South Island. Off to track down Miki’s ghost, and to volunteer our hands and stories on other New Zealand homesteads and farms.
***
After The Endless Summer, and as the 60’s progressed, surf culture continued to evolve in regards to the ways surfers rode waves – i.e. boards became shorter and styles more aggressive, hair grew longer, and the music louder – but it only further embraced the Romantic idealization of escapism, of surfers as world travelers seeking out the images of perfection that they were being fed by their own medias, and as the crowd situations hit critical mass in the surfing hot beds of California and Hawaii (again a by-product of their own medias and travels, with heaps of help from Hollywood). Surfers incessantly touted themselves as individuals, “escaping from the confines of a western society gone awry in search of a pristine, tropical paradise, unsullied by crowds and commercial industry,[1]” by living in harmony with nature, connecting to the direct energies and forces of the natural environment by riding mother ocean’s waves while travelling away from the polluted environment and idea of the city. Throughout the 1971 surf film “The Sunshine Sea”, the narrator reinforces these ideas by stating, “Riding a wave has become a basic expression of man in harmony with his environment,” and that “The ultimate message of surfing is the wedding of nature and man, a return to something simple, basic and individual. The surfer accepts the natural order of the world, a natural balance of man working with the environment instead of against it.” The ocean was a force to be respected, and one that was not easily tamed. Ford and Brown note how Auden, “summarizes the distinctive Romantic attitude to the sea as including the desire on the part of the man [sic] of honour and sensibility to leave the land and the city, to voyage on the sea as the true test of masculinity, the realm where the decisive events, the moments of eternal choice occur.” These sentiments have been strongly at play within our contemporary surf culture as it has fed off the images and messages of the 60’s and 70’s, even more so when big wave riding is figured into the equation. In Alby Falzon’s Morning of the Earth (1971), surfers are shown ‘living off the land’ in the Australian countryside, shaping their own boards and surfing their brains out in uncrowded waters. The film takes the viewer to Bali, where the waves had just been “discovered” and the people still living off the land in a tropical paradise. These films were successfully selling a lifestyle and mentality with the best intentions, but other Westernized concepts would flood the surf world, and the reality of harmonious co-existence would fade.
Enter the 21st century. As world travelers (generally speaking), surfers and non-surfers alike, aren’t living any sort of harmonious existence with our environment, no matter how you spin it and surf tourism is manifesting greater socio-political concerns. Dr. Tony Butt, who has a regular column in The Surfers Path, a UK based enviro-surf magazine, recently reported his own findings on the surfers carbon consumption compared to the average non-surfing citizen. His stats were geographically specific (compiled from his own poll via The Surfers Path), but in all areas of the world, surfers are much greater carbon consumers, leaving unsustainable footprints as they escape the pollution and crowds of their home breaks by flying off to exotic locales, or simply from driving up and down their local coastlines looking for surf and relief from the crowds. We ride boards and use wetsuits made from toxic chemicals. We travel to places like Indonesia, and take advantage of foreign owned surf charter companies, hardly stepping foot on land or contributing to the local economic base[2]. In these third world surfing hot spots that do develop land based tourism, the thrust of Westernized economies into the areas often leave the locals staggering to catch up with the foreign investment that has taken advantage of comparatively cheap land, labor forces and lack of environmental regulations that are readily available, so that the travelling surfer can live the dream[3].
In a Surfer article on surf colonization, based off his experiences and observations in Bali – a destination highly glamorized and publicized by the surf industry since Morning of the Earth, Steve Barilloti explains that, “in the wake of the explorers inevitably follow the settlers…while the baseline activity of surfing is essentially non-exploitative, once surfers set up a collective around a marquee surf break suck as Jefferys Bay or Uluwatu, the impacts of human colonization – trash, roads, erosion, water pollution, development, environmental degradation, resource depletion – inevitably follows.” In his surf travels, Barilotti has observed that, “most surfers travel not to experience another culture but to find waves similar to their home breaks but without the crowds. In many cases the indigenous people are an obstacle or a friendly nuisance to sidestep on the way to the water.” That is not living harmoniously, and is also a sentiment that I second from both my own travels through Mexico and Costa Rica, and from all the surf media that I’ve consumed over the years. The waves are the thing for far too many surfers. The crowds, and the ‘surfers gaze’ created by the medias – a gaze prescribed by the images we consume and the desires they produce – are the inspiration for that endless summer ideal. Barilotti makes another important observation, that “surfers seem ill-equipped to handle the big questions of geopolitics and globalization. The surfing gestalt is based on cool indifference to concerns of politics, religion or class,” which would explain the justification of how surfers travel, never realizing or acknowledging that they themselves create the crowds, deepen the economic divide in undeveloped (at least in westernized concepts of the term) communities, and greatly contribute to global warming in their wanderlust, and will continue to do so the more they explore and push the frontier boundaries. It would explain the profiting existence of dozens of foreign owned surf charter boats operating off the Mentawais in Indonesia, where surfers live and surf in luxury accommodations within spitting distance of communities ravaged by malaria and corrupt and racist governments[4]. Or that they are partly responsible for the social and environmental problems that arise when a place like Bali is turned into a cess-poll surf ghetto by non-local enterprises.
I think it is time to move away from the Romantic model of yesterday if we really care about surf culture and the one planet that we have (not the theoretical seven that it would take to sustain surfers at their current levels of consumption[5]). I find it the ultimate irony, that surfing, an experience and culture once driven toward darkness by western colonial advancement and antiquated religious doctrine, is now the responsible for another wave of oppressive western colonialism and the new globalized religion of capitalism.
Luckily, not all is doom and gloom and there are people and organizations and alternatives that we as surfers, can look to, support and engage in if we do decide to make global travel a part of our life. Surf Aid International, a New Zealand based NGO was “formed in response to travelling surfers observations of inadequate (often absent) health care facilities in many destinations frequented by surfers.[6]” Surfing doctor Dave Jenkins started the non-profit around the millenium after growing fed-up with the lack of basic health care available in the Mentawais, and focuses on delivering basic health needs, training local health workers and applying for grants that go toward indigenous causes. “We believe that everyone who partakes in the surfing culture, be it from reading, writing or advertising in a magazine, watching or producing a video or wearing a label, has a role to play in helping these people…we know that most surfers care – but in the past have lacked a relevant vehicle for helping.[7]”
While in Peru on a stint with Peace Corps., Dave Aabo, co-founder of WAVES for Development, was making weekend trips to the coast to sneak in surfs and release some stress. Some of the places he surfed, like Chicama and Máncora were developed surf towns. However, Aabo knew that they were towns were the locals weren’t necessarily reaping the benefits or in control of the situation. “If you look at a town like Máncora,” he explains in The Surfers Path, “it has become the Northern Peru surfing destination. There are surf camps, restaurants, nightclubs…However, it’s one of these places where the people benefiting are not the locals…they are often from Lima or they are foreigners.[8]” He was also deeply bothered by lack of cultural exchange and reciprocity that he witnessed. “There were people coming in, bringing in lots of money, bringing in their $500 surfboards, $20,000 cars, strolling up to the beach, hooting and hollering on the waves and then leaving,[9]” so when he visited an undeveloped wave haven 30 miles to the south, he was inspired to make effort that would keep the inevitable forthcoming tourism development in the hands of the locals. “We knew it was a special place, and with a wave that good, it was only a matter of time before big things started happening here.”
WAVES for Development (Water, Adventure, Voluntourism, Education and Sustainability) is getting the local kids in the water with hundreds of boards donated to the program, as well as teaching them board repair skills, entrepreneurship and English. The program has both a permanent staff and a cast of travelling volunteers and a mantra of “Making the world a better place through surfing.” For Aabo, WAVES is his contribution to re-thinking the wave centric travel mode, or as he puts it, “to use surfing to accomplish more than the selfish need of getting the best wave.[10]”
Dr. Jess Ponting, who’s PhD is in the field of sustainable surf tourism believes that as surfers continue, “going on trips to exotic locations expecting to find the surfing paradise that they have seen in magazines only to find areas that are deeply troubled, sometimes with humanitarian crises on the land right near the breaks,[11]” that these experiences will continue to dislocate the Romantic idealized notion of surf travel. Surf culture will continue to evolve, as it has to in order to survive, and this new enlightenment should produce a desire to share, to help out and to learn from the communities that we encounter while on the search.
We need to embrace alternatives. Make the trips count, and make them last, use the carbon footprint wisely. Spend some time getting to know the communities you travel to, doing some research before hand, seeking out local organizations that could use some help and figure out where you money is going to. Whether it is traveling to Indonesia and helping deliver Malaria vaccines, or Peru to tutor a kid in English while they tutor you in Spanish before sharing a session in their backyard, there are heaps and heaps of ways to become involved while surfing too. On your next journey down to Mexico or Chile, see if there is a WWOOF farm near your destination. Get local, get creative, and get stoked.
In Duane’s, Caught Inside, he chronicles a year in his life getting to know his own surfing backyard in intimate detail; the history, the flora and fauna and swell details for all the off the beaten path breaks within an hour of his home. I’ve read about surfing icons retro-fitting their bicycles and kayaks to accommodate surfboards and camping gear, travelling locally for new perspectives and less environmental impact. There are so many options, so many roads less traveled, often right there at home. We just need to slow down and take a look out the window. What is out there? What are the possibilities right here at home? I know that when Christine and I return stateside, that all these stories and experiences are going to encourage us to stop and smell the roses and lilacs and home sweet home sea breeze scents even more then we already do.
***
March 20, 2010 Milton, New Zealand 9:08am
I spent yesterday morning milking the goats with Jack, feeding the chooks and a bit of weeding with Christine out front to make room for more strawberries. The three of us cleaned a honey comb out of its bee box wood frame, and put it in a cleaned up empty ice cream container for Christine and I to enjoy as we continue our adventure through the islands. After our afternoon tea, Jack told us stories from childhood, the ones that have shaped the man that he is today. How his Maori culture called him back from his Jehovah’s Witness up-bringing, how the histories of Aotearoa and New Zealand are looked at now with enlightened visions inspiring new concepts for the countries future. He told us about the mischief and epiphanies, the good and the bad. Then we laid mud mats down around the garden, and enjoyed an evening tea of ceviched mussels and butter soaked blue cod and thanked each other for the hospitality, knowledge sharing, and old fashioned good times.
Christine and I need to pack up the van once again, and continue heading south. The swell is there and the winds offshore, hanging around the Catlans and Southland, but a new weather system is moving in quickly. Cyclones and tropical storms are raging around the seascapes of the Tasman and the Pacific. It’s all one big wave really, this trip, this life, at least that’s how I see it, and we’ve only begun to drop in. Kia Ora.
[1] Quoted from Endo.
[2] See Ponting.
[3] See Ponting, Reeves, Barilotti.
[4] See Ponting, Barilotti.
[5] See Butt.
[6] Quoted from Ponting.
[7] Jenkins quoted in Barilotti.
[8] Quoted in Endo
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
Works Cited:
- Barilotti, Steve. Lost Horizons: Surfer Colonialism in the 21st Century. 2002.
- Brown, Bruce, Director. The Endless Summer. Columbia Pictures. 1966.
- Brown, David and Ford, Nick. Surfing and Social Theory: Experience, embodiment and narrative of the dream glide. Routledge. 2006.
- Butt, Tony, PhD. Are Surfers Environmentally Friendly? The Surfers Path. #71 April-May, 2009.
- Crawford, Carin. Waves of Transformation. Self published master’s thesis. www.lajollasurf.org/wavesof.html
- Duane, Daniel. Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year On The California Coast. North Point Press. 1996
- Endo, Tetsuhiko. The Stoke Virus. The Surfers Path. #75, Dec/Jan 2009/10.
- Freeman, Jim and MacGillivray, Greg, Directors. The Sunshine Sea. 1971.
- Jamieson, Philippa. The Wild Green Yonder: Ten seasons volunteering on New Zealand’s Organic Farms. New Holland Publishers. 2007
- Kampion, Drew. Stoked: A History of Surf Culture. Gibbs Smith. 2003.
- Leuras, Leonard. Surfing: The Ultimate Pleasure. Emphasis International, 1984.
- Moser, Patrick (editor). Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing. University of Hawai’i Press. 2008
- Ormond, Joan. Endless Summer 1964: Consuming Waves and Surfing the Frontier. Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. 35.1. 2005. P.35-51.
- Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze. Sage Publications. 2nd ed. 2002.
- Warshaw, Matt. Surf Movie Tonight!.
new surf dialogue 
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