Ode to Jeff Clark: The Pull of the Waves

Two days ago I randomly woke up just before seven o’clock.  Fully awake, unable to drift back to sleep, surprised at my lack of a hangover, I decided to go surfing.  I knew the water would be cold because of recent winds blowing in cold water.  I grabbed my wetsuit and board and quietly made my way out past my sleeping family members.  It was foggy outside, and the thickness of the fog only increased as I got to the beach.  As I walked up over the dunes, I realized that I was the only one out there.  The waves were glassy and breaking clean, but there was still that little voice in the back of my head saying, “you really shouldn’t go out.  It’s foggy, cold, you’re the only one out here, just wait a while.” But then something happened that I didn’t expect, the voice stopped, and I felt my feet walk me down to the waters edge.  I paddled out into the line up.  So there I was, sitting at the peak, by myself, with my own thoughts.  I remember being so focused, and I could feel the ocean with every fiber of my body.  I was a part of it.  That little voice came back and this time it said, “don’t think about all those things you fear, just be glad to be here.”  I had found my sanctuary.  This break that I had frequented for years and years, I had just been reinvented in my mind.  In a way, I felt like Jeff Clark.  For those of you who don’t know, Jeff Clark is the guy who discovered the big wave break Mavericks in Northern California, and surfed it by himself for fifteen years.  Now granted, my local surf break is not nearly as intense as Mavericks, but it’s the same concept.  Jeff Clark’s biggest challenge was internalizing all that emotion, and all the drama, and all that adrenaline, from surfing a spot like Mavericks year after year.  What he had to do is something that every surfer has to do in his or her own way. 

    That morning wasn’t the first time that my local break here on LBI, NJ had spoken to me.  Last summer, tropical storm Hannah blew up the North East Coast, and produced some truly epic swells.  I woke up at seven, on purpose this time, and made my way to the beach.  The waves were breaking big, ten to fifteen feet, and I had to paddle out around the jetty to get into the line up.  I had a headache, my limbs were stiff, but a wave came and I went for it.  I made the drop and rode half way down the beach, and instantly, my headache was gone, and I forgot about the pain in my limbs.  I cheered and hollered as I got off the wave, and paddled back out for more.  All surfers, young and old, feel the pull of the waves.  Laird Hamilton put it beautifully when he described the depression felt when the ocean isn’t producing waves.  He said that “it’s like being a dragon slayer and suddenly there are no more dragons, and you are left saying why am I here? What is my purpose?”  Again, my waves aren’t anywhere close to what Laird does, but the message remains the same.  It has nothing to do with ego, we aren’t trying to prove something, it’s just what we do. It’s who we are. 

Image via Wikipedia