Snow Surfer

January 21, 2019

Greetings from the snow surfer,

“The biggest sin in the world would be if I lost my love for the ocean.”  Laird Hamilton

Just a few months ago, I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Lisbon.  The kind of hotel that has five stars, where you don’t normally see runners lounging in among the ferns and marble.  I was drinking espresso, sitting a few feet from the urn where I would fill my tiny cup again, trying to be patient with that process, accustomed as I was to a mug that holds more than a mouthful.

It was so early I didn’t expect to see anyone else, but I looked up and saw my friend Julie walking toward me.  She was wearing a pullover and board shorts and some beach shoes, like myself, hardly five-star attire.  Julie is a surfer and I only had to talk to her for a minute to know where her passion is.  Less time than that to feel the kinship.  

Julie was on her way to check out the waves, which might not occur to anyone else in the hotel; hadn’t to me.   But the waves were out there waiting.  She had a cut on her head from where someone’s board cracked into her the day before.  I asked her about it, and she shrugged it off. 

After a few minutes her guide came in, a rangy young man, the two of them completely different and yet cut from the same cloth.  I know the look. 

I felt the kinship.  The three of us up, somewhere before 5 am, wanting something from the day that only a few would work to capture.  Surfers and runners have mornings in common.

I have spent most of my life in the Midwest, but I for some reason I know a lot of surfers.  I start that list with my sister’s husband, my Brother-in-Life, Bill.  Nearly 6000 miles away from the hotel lobby, when the sun finally reached southern California, Bill would be putting a board in the water.

Mornings aren’t the only time he surfs but I’d seen him enough in that part of the day.  Paddling out, shoulder muscles bunching and flexing, natural, powerful, at ease, rolling over the swells, and then turning in the calm, sitting astride the board and waiting.  Patient, at peace, waiting for the wave, but soaking in the start of the day.  So I had an idea what it would look like for Julie that morning. 

She would know before she got in the water how the surf was.  She would be standing up to her waist, the leash on her ankle, taking a moment to watch the roll of the next wave, to time when she stretched out on the board and began paddling out to meet it.  Glide over it, down the long backside and move out further to where the water was flat.

Waiting in the calm outside the break, catching her breath, probably thinking the same kinds of things I consider on a run.  Watching for the wave, then moving after it, working furiously to the top of the foamy edge, paddling harder now, heart hammering, racing to catch the wave, urgent but wanting to hit it just at the peak.  Toppling over the crest, and dropping into the face of it, maybe ducking into the spray, weaving the board in and out, feeling the muscles working, the heart pounding, the feel of the wet edge of the wave.

This vignette is such a glaring contrast to yesterday morning, here in Michigan, that in most normal minds they would not cross paths.  But you know better than to expect normal here.

Yesterday morning I went for a run in the frozen farmlands near here.  The full moon was shining on the thin layer of snow, creating most of the light around me as it settled west.  Two teardrops of brilliance floated in the ink above me.  It was dark but the sky in the east was already considering navy instead of black.  The wind went to great lengths explaining what -17 will feel like.

I was layered in more gear than an astronaut doing a spacewalk, an appropriate comparison, given the hostile environment.  As I ran, I could feel the cold tugging at the places where it wanted to change my skin to frost.

I ran through the dark edge of morning, my breathing loud inside the balaclava, tiny puffs of white escaping the cloth, erased instantly by the wind.  I pushed through the first miles, my body warming to the work, making my way into the pace that will carry me the next ten miles.

I turned out of the wind, finally, to finish the rectangle home, and in that mile the sun pressed against the treeline and threaded yellow-white warmth across the open field.  The wind, inspired by this, whirled the snow into a white spout, a spray the ocean would have been proud of.

I felt the moment ping back between all the experiences in the last few months, connect with the two surfers in the quiet lobby.  It made me laugh as I ran, I’m sure you heard it. 

There is a great camaraderie in running, and in surfing, a community with many of the same bonds.  The runners gathered in the dim morning waiting for someone to start, someone laughs, they trade comments on aches and miles.  Or the dark shapes bobbing in the water, conversation dimmed by the ocean, their boards swinging in the stippled surface.  There is kinship, but it is an effort expended by the individual, each one creates what will happen in the experience.

I had this other thought, given to me by the surfers.  The process they go through to get to where they can ride the wave is not unlike preparing for a marathon.  The training, the equipment, working to get out where it’s possible to ride water, paddling out beyond where normal people go.  And then scrambling madly to capture the crest, furiously working to reach the near perfect place on the breaking wave.

In just 83 days I will run the Boston Marathon.  To borrow the surfer’s metaphor, I have already paddled out beyond where sane people will go on purpose.  Right now I am turning in the water, piling up the miles, tearing down and building up my body, and heading back toward the big swell in front of me.  It’s coming.  I am already thinking about how to get to the crest at the right time.

And there is this; all of us runners and surfers know that the purpose is not simply to finish.  There is a tremendous joy in the climax, crossing the line, feeling the board tip over the edge of the foam at just the moment you wanted, and the surge of adrenaline as you shoot out the end of the curl.

But the getting there, the moments that make up all the mornings, that is where the living is.  The lacing up, the loading up, the first step, the splash across the board before you stretch out on it.  And then the endless ribbon of road, and the limitless horizon, where we go to see the beauty that is made for us each morning.  And in ways small and large, feel the link between us kindred souls.

Hope this finds you paddling out,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith