The forecast today calls for warm and sunny skies ~ offshore wind ~ and humongous waves. I pop some vitamin C ~ chase it with fruit juice and coffee ~ put the top down ~ toss my body board in ~ and careen through town ~ feeling warm but doubtful there‘ll be much surf ~ we just don’t get humongous waves here. I round the bend from Olive Mill Road to Channel Drive ~ that runs along the beach ~ where I enter a fog bank so thick ~ it blots out the sun. Burn-off, I suppose ~ no, wait ~ its ocean spray being thrown off the swells hitting the shore ~ creating a mist that hangs in the air. I pull over ~ run across the sand ~ and dive in ~ realizing, in horror, I’m over my head in break water ~ created by humongous waves crashing ~ one after the other ~ leaving me nothing to do except hang on and ride them in. I’m sitting on the beach catching my breath when I see half a surfboard wash ashore ~ then the other half still tethered to a guy named Chris ~ thank God, he says ~ he needed it to find the surface ~ I’m sitting on the cliffs watching the waves get bigger and bigger ~ and the beach get smaller and smaller ~ telling myself over and over ~ this is fucking phenomenal.
2 comments:
I'm reminded of my deceased husband, who hailed from sunny California... San Diego area, to be exact. He grew up surfing, he and his brother dragging their surfboards behind them, pulling them along on a wagon behind their bikes. Then he moved around to places where there were no waves. When he got to Carolina he was talking about trying to catch some waves next storm to come around. I was like, "Good grief, you can't do that! There's a terrible undertow out there, on the East coast during a storm, that will drag you under and drown you!" Then he starts telling me about the rip-tide out in Cali... and then we are googling rip-tide and undertow to see if they are the same thing. Apparently they are, and surfers use the tip tide to carry them out... and they know perfectly well how to swim with them, unlike us folks down here who never saw a wave big enough to surf... all we know is the dangerous undertow. He told some tales, lotsa skint up places, ate a lot of sand and surf. I'll have to post a lovely poem, for you, on my blog, that he wrote about waiting for the wave. A fellow surfer might relate. Did you ever see In God's Hands? Very nice flic. I never surfed, one of those things I dreamed about... but always enjoyed watching movies about surfing.
god bless your husband ..
ah yes, the terrible under toad
bless your heart for watching surf movies
and I will have to watch In God’s Hands ..thank you so much for that
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