“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite. The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can instill unjust laws, fight and tear on another to pieces and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at below its surface, their reign ceases. Their influence is quenched. Their power disappears. Oh sir, Live, lie in the bosom of the waters. There is only independence. There I am free”. ― Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
It is late afternoon. That time of day on any west coast where the color of the sea and the land contract into vivid hues and shadows begin to crawl east like living things and a golden path rises from the sea and leads to the sun. You are at the surf break of Medewi Point on the island of Bali, far from the tourist madness to the south and you can see alpha local Muklis Anwar and his covey of wet, shiny, local kids crabbing their way toward shore over the slippery boulders on the inside of the surf break. A misstep here and any one of them will receive a spray of urchin spines deep into the front pads of their feet and nothing more than a sewing machine needle to dig them out with. Muklis has been teaching the village kids how to surf and the kids hold under their arms all manner of relic surfboards. Chunked, split and repaired, cast away like dolls without heads by the western visitors of this place over the decades. Yet these boards are gold to the humble, to be smelted and re-...
Death is no big deal, it’s living that’s the tricky part. And don’t we do that well, us surfers. Living, I mean. Oh no, maybe not always, measured by societal success, but in the goal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we win. Every time we jump in the ocean. It’s that pursuit of happiness thing. On the face of a wave, a really good wave, there is literally no where else we would rather be. Think about it. In bed with a lover? Or rocketing down the line with a perfect wall lining up in front of you. C’mon, be honest. George Greenough, 70’s kneeboarding savant, even named his seminal surf movie about it. The Innermost Limits of Pure Joy. We’ll say two things about that. One, it was the first time anybody ever filmed surfing from inside the tube. And with a home made housing with a hand wound 16mm camera crammed inside it worn on his back and weighing 30 kilos. Think about that the next time you have a weightless Go Pro clenched in your teeth. Don’t worry, we don’t expec...
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