Learning to Surf: Nature Doesn’t Give a Fuck

I’m learning to surf.

It’s a long-game for me. I don’t have a surf board yet.

Two years of living in Southern California and this spring I realized it’s time. You might have various assumptions about why I’ve failed to venture into the water here for so long. The truth is it just never crossed my mind.

So a few weeks ago I walked 2.5 miles to the nearest Play It Again Sports and bought a used bodyboard for $10 and a too-long-for-bodyboarding leash. The clerk told me as much, “usually you just get a short leash for your wrist.”

“I know,” is all I offered him back with a smile.

On the walk home I stopped into DAV, a local thrift store, and bought a long-sleeve lycra running shirt that was two sizes too small. The perfect $3 rash guard.

After braiding up my hair and digging out my neoprene booties I wandered down to the beach.

Of course I immediately ran into someone I know so they could watch me get tossed around like a beach ball in the surf trying to figure things out. I only got chewed up and spit out by the waves a half dozen times before I finally got past the surf line, could collapse on my boogie, and recover.

I don’t have a lot of upper body strength, and I guess that surprises people to hear because they see me workout all the time.

I have a lot of old neck injuries. One of those is a broken neck which left me with muscle wasting in my arms for several years while rehabbing the worst of it. Every bit of strength I have has been hard-won and often through searing pain.

I’ve also never been a strong swimmer, it wasn’t a requirement growing up in the Midwest.

Regardless, I marched out into the ocean like I somehow know some secret super power. Fake it until you make it.

The bodyboard is my safety device while I build up some strength. I’m gonna need it when I graduate to actual surfing.

I’m trying to set myself up for success. Or as my friend Will (aka Guillermo) told me, “you’re training like a professional would!” He makes a really great hype-man and is already holding a candle for me riding a barrel one day.

So as often as I can I strap on my bodyboard and venture out into the surf to practice swimming with different strokes, and to see how long I can tread water.

I’m excited to share my little journey with friends. Most of them ask if I’m afraid of what’s swimming in the water, “nah! I’m that weirdo that hopes something bumps into me while I’m out there. I be saying to the water, ‘hey friends, here I am, come say hi!”

My boyfriend asked me once, “why would you do that?” when I was telling him about a time I went looking to get into a high-speed cop chase while on the back of a bike but we just ended up doing 140+mph around the city instead. “My sense of danger is a little broken…” is about the best way I can sum it up.

I had a virus over the weekend that really zapped me, but I was feeling mostly better yesterday. Some weird back pain but nothing I hadn’t resolved before with some massage and stretching. So I figured why not head back out into the water today.

It’s a strange sensation. I can be exhausted on land and as soon as I’m buoyed by saltwater I feel like I can go forever. My body goes automaton and just lets me keep paddling and kicking. I was in the water swimming constantly for more than an hour today and the only reason I came in was to get back to work. My body wanted to keep going.

I’m glad I came in when I did today, because even if I feel invincible in the water I certainly feel the exertion as soon as I return to land.

And on the way in, I got rolled up by a massive wave and came through the longest hold down I’ve been in yet.

Guillermo gave me a pep talk last week about being in the water and how powerful it is. And what you can expect with hold downs. How to learn to breath and relax and keep track of the timing of waves. How to exist in your body in the moment.

I need that, to learn to reconnect with my body. I get too much in my head and forget how to exist in the senses of what keeps me alive.

In that hold down I felt like things slowed down. I counted it out in seconds, eyes closed but I could give you a clear picture of what the water around me looked like. The noise of the water chewing on me in debate of whether it would swallow me down or spew me out.

And I relaxed. I let it roll me around and rush through me until it was ready to release.

10 seconds, not long and not short. I want to be comfortable being held down forever.

Sometimes I think about how insignificant I am when I’m out on the water. How easily the waves could change direction and disappear me. Would anyone think to look for me in the sea? Even a few hundred meters from shore and my voice is nearly lost, it wouldn’t take much.

When I first came to California I kept meeting people who seemed “soft” to me. People who’d never had to live somewhere that nature could easily kill them each year – thinking of my childhood in Wisconsin winters of -20F and seeing news reports about children being left outside for a few hours by a bad parent and freezing to death.

But I keep finding good friends in surfers; and I’d hardly think of them as soft and vulnerable individuals.

Then again, they do what even Midwesterners aren’t always guilty of — intentionally meeting nature where it stands and hoping they come out on the swell.

Today I think, it’s good to find real nature when you can.

Sitting here in my changing robe, too tired to get properly dressed. Drained of everything, some ocean glitter still stuck to me, salt in my hair.

Even if nature doesn’t give a fuck, being in it might help you find reasons to give a fuck.