Jul
31
Surf’s Up!
A few weeks ago, three friends from Savsko naselje decided to take a not-so “Endless Summer” trip with a surf club called Ujusansa, alongside a number of
other Slovenian first-timers. The three amigos had been strenuously preparing for the trip for some time, twisting and discombobulating in strange positions on their floors at home, as well as talking each other up in order to acquire the required mental fortitude to ride a wave… As destiny would have it, one of them had been hit by a car while riding around on his roller skates a few weeks prior, and owing to his cracked knee nearly wasn’t able to go… in a brilliant twist of fate, he would later prove himself the most adept surfer of the three…
The Musketeers arrived excited at their camp in Zarautz, a gorgeous little town on the Atlantic Ocean, located in the Basque region of Spain near the border with France. The vistas were breathtaking and reminded the American of the wonderfully jagged coastlines and soft rolling hills of Southern California. The sunsets were a bonus… The friends were quick to learn everything they could, as they had been warned that surfing is extremely demanding and more a lifestyle than a hobby. Surfing takes no prisoners but the benefits are tremendous…
That said, the waves are your friend only in proportion to how well you react to and work with them… the ocean has its ways should one listen closely and there are lessons to be had, for Old Neptune has proven methods of teaching us how insignificant we really are… One quickly learns that it is far better to go with the flow rather than engage in a futile battle against the forces of creation. To stand up on the surfboard is to be born again, to mantle the eternal chi and to claim immortality for a few brief moments…
Watching from the shoreline, a casual observer would be tempted to think light of all that threshing back and forth, but as with golf and baseball and so many sports, it is so much more interesting to be doing, as opposed to watching. The currents strike hard and fast, the ocean ebbs and flows, the surf shreds and the moon watches all aglow… but the waves reward persistence and punish hubris, and there are timeless kernels of knowledge just waiting to be absorbed out there, somewhere, in the vastness of the sea…
The ocean is very powerful and to be respected. I tried surfing once, it was extremely difficult.
