An icy curl broke over my head and crashed into my body, throwing me off my surfboard and forcing me underwater in a cloud of white misty foam. My lungs filled up with water as I was washed beneath the waves. I popped up out of the water, coughing and hacking away the saline solution I just swallowed.
My board sat floating 10 feet away from me, gently being pushed by the ocean’s swells. I retrieved it and looked back into the sunset; the wind was blowing drenched stands of hair across my face.
“Man,” I said to myself, “this is awesome.”
Several days before I had found myself sitting a small meeting room in the upstairs corridor of McLain Hall, paper in hand detailing a trip I’d been waiting to go on for almost a year. In two days a group of 11 of us would be in-route to Cannon Beach to surf. For the next four days in the ocean’s waters and the nights surrounding a campfire eating the best dutch oven cobbler to ever hit my innocent taste buds.
We left Coeur d’Alene early in the morning just as the sunrise began illuminating the town into a myriad of soft gray hues. Our nine-hour journey was underway, each person was crammed into the NIC van like can of sleepy sardines guzzling coffee by the gallon.
The van came to screeching halt in Cannon Beach at a surf shop that had a sign on it’s wall reading “Cannon Beach Surf Shop & Market Parking Only. NO ASSMUNCHES.” We were met by Mark Mekenas, the owner of the shop, a large older man with moderately-long hair and mustache. After the group piled into the shop Mark addressed us all from behind the counter.
“Here’s the deal guys, you pay 45 bucks upfront for the board and wetsuit so I won’t have to shoot you guys later,” he said with a sly degree of sarcastic wit.
We passed through Manzanita and made way to our campsite. After tossing out our gear into the site and setting up tents, we all geared up into the wetsuits and began the first day of surfing.
The first two days were brutal. Every time I caught a wave I managed to fly over the nose of the board and on the first alone I took three boards to the head after wiping out. On the second day the group traveled to Oswald West State Park and surfed the Short Sand Beach. Good waves were few and far in between and there was a lot of waiting around.
We returned to Short Sands on Saturday and the waves were perfect. Large swells came crashing onto the coastline in an infinite and unending wash. I paddled out into water, cruising over each wave as I went. I caught a number of great waves and managed to get myself into a crouched-kneeling position each time but I still couldn’t stand up completely without wiping out almost immediately and getting a taste of a salty beverage.
I was sitting on my surfboard 20 yards from shore when I saw it. A large swell came over the horizon and was slowly heading towards me. She’s the one, I told myself as I peered into the distance. I flipped onto my stomach watching the wave over my shoulder and began paddling relentlessly. My arms grew weary with every stroke and I could feel the fibers in my chest and shoulders begin to burn with an unconventional pain that urged me to paddle on.
The wave broke and suddenly I was gliding weightlessly towards the shoreline, taking this moment I hopped onto my feet without hesitation. For the first time ever I was surfing in the spirit as the ancient Polynesians had hundreds of years before me. I watched the pure, glassy water envelope around me. For a moment, time and space stands still as I float through an amazing oceanic world. The ocean and I seem seamless, bound together by a spiritual unity that could only be experienced by riding a wave.
That sense of unity then became a little too real when I undecidedly took a monstrous faceplant, flailing with the grace of a manatee into the water. After a bit of sloshing around, I popped up from beneath the surface in a daze. The side of my face was stinging and my head was throbbing with pain.
Later that night we came down to the beach near our campsite to watch the sun set over the Pacific. The cloudless sky was ablaze with red and orange as the fiery orb made it’s way into the horizon. A cool breeze from the North gently brushed against the earth and several horses galloped elegantly across the shore.
“I could see myself living here one day,” I thought to myself, thinking a fevered dream of giving up my life as I know it, moving to the Coast and living in a camper van with my dog, surfing my days away, and living off of a gratuitous supply of bean burritos and gas station coffee.
Maybe it isn’t much of a fevered dream at all. One thing I learned while taking up surfing is that you have to give up on having a sense of control in life. The tide is going to push you back towards shore no matter if you fight and struggle against it with all your might or you go with the flow.
It’s very much the same in life, many things exist as they are regardless of any kind of action anybody may take. You have to live in the moment and ride the wave, accept its power, let it take you where it’s going, and have one hell of a time while you’re doing it.
