Anarchy in the Water: A Recollection

Mini Memoir about Surfing

Photo by Croyde Bay on Unsplash

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*Written in 2018

I recently started reading the memoir called Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan, a book about Finnegan’s surfing experiences in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, all the way up to the present. He’d been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1987, and had been a war reporter. But, in the mid 1960s, he moved with his family, as a 13-year-old, to Hawaii. This was where his real surfing apprenticeship began.

            Besides the writing being gorgeous, his story resonates deeply with me. Growing up in Southern California—Ventura first, Ojai starting in 1991, when I was eight years old—I learned to surf around age ten. By eleven I had a “gun,” a term used for a half long, half short board—a long, thick board but with the style of a short board, traditionally used for big-wave days—and by twelve I could carve green swell with the old guys. By age 13—where Barbarian Days starts—I was surfing this spot in Ventura, not yet popular, called Solimar Beach.

            Solimar—“Soli” my friend Chris and I called it—was right off Highway One in Ventura, off PCH, Pacific Coast Highway. A half mile string of million-dollar homes sat above the sand facing the curving beach. Early morning sunlight glinted off homes’ windows. There was the road—PCH—and the train tracks (you could see long silver Amtrak trains and old rickety freight trains with text saying “Burlington Northern Santa Fe” in black against rusty red passing as you surfed) and then palm trees, hills and dense California forest. Cars swished back and forth on Highway One.

            I don’t remember anymore how Chris and I “discovered” Soli. We were 13 and 14. Chris was one year older. He lived in Oak View, a working-class town sandwiched between Ventura and Ojai. I came from money. He did not. By the age of five or six he’d been helping his father here and there at his plumbing business. And he worked part time during the summers. He would be expected to work throughout high school.

            My dad was driving us around on PCH in his ’94 beige Dodge Ram truck, our short boards lightly clattering in the metallic back bed, up and down the Ventura coast, when we saw the perfect peak breaking out there in front of the million-dollar homes. Dad pulled over. Chris and I watched a few sets. We eyed each other.

            Twenty minutes later we were out. It was January. Cold. A storm brewing. Light on/off rain. We were the only ones. Our wetsuits kept us warm but barely. We had to move to keep warm. The water was a gray brown sludge color, not from runoff or anything but because of recent rain and winter storms. When you “duck-dove” under a wave you got that ice cream headache.

            Before we knew it we were catching waves, left, right, chest high. It was fun. Exhilarating. Chris had a fat grin on his face. He was tall and skinny and muscled; carved out of clay. He worked with his hands, came from blue collar Irish Catholic alcoholic stock. My hands were soft. I was from the upper-middleclass. A different world. Everyone in my family had a master’s degree. My dad had two. He was a computer engineer that worked for the Navy. My mom taught a master’s nursing program at Cal State. Chris’s dad owned a piping and heating company which Chris was expected to work at. His mom worked there, too. He had two younger sisters. I was an only child.

            “Outside,” Chris said. He started paddling wildly, dipping his black wetsuit arm into the sludgy brown water and arrowing ahead. I caught a glance down the beach and saw an older man walking in our direction from the muddy dirt parking lot where my dad waited in his Dodge reading The Los Angeles Times. The man carried a bone-white long-board.

            When I flipped around I saw a massive set approaching. Big, thick, brown. The waves coming were the bulkiest we’d seen. Must have been a solid seven, eight feet. At 13, this was terrifying. Chris was way out ahead of me. I panicked. I paddled furiously, both to my right side, heading away from the main impact zone, and out, hoping to get past the breakers.

            I barely made it past the first wave in the set. It scared me. Too meaty, too thick, too harsh. I paddled as hard as I could. I wanted to turn and look at the older man with the long-board, see if he was watching from the beach, or starting his paddle. But I didn’t turn.

            “Shit,” Chris yelled. He was probably 30 yards ahead of me. He slid off his board, took some breaths, and jumped off, diving under water. The giant wave closed down just ahead of him and crashed into mega boulders of white water, cascading like some mountain slide on Mount Everest. I hoped he’d gone deep enough. But what about me?

            The wall of white wash rushed at me like an angry river. Eight feet high. I had no choice. I couldn’t duck dive this. Too powerful. I did as Chris had done. I counted down. Three, two one. I slid off, chucked my board, took some deep breaths, said a prayer, and dove under.

            Underwater everything went quiet for one moment and then the righteous, violent crash and rush and boom of pummeling white water. I’d gone four or five feet down. I couldn’t feel the bottom. I got pulled up for a moment, yanked left, then right, left again, and got tugged halfway upside down. Air. I needed air!

            I turned and swam as hard as I could, over, over, up, up. I realized I’d been turned around and was swimming left, not up. I was desperate for oxygen. At last I grasped where up was and murderously arrowed towards that direction.

            I crashed, broke through the brown surface, gasping for air, flailing my hands.

            I saw Chris, ahead of me, way out there. Several more set waves were coming. All as large as the first two. Shit. Where was my board?

            I felt the ankle leash still attached to my leg. I curled up, reached for the black thin leash, tugged it—thankfully still in one piece—swiveled the board, got onto it, and started paddling as hard and fast as I could. I went left this time, trying once more to avoid the impact zone. I needed to get away from the middle, either left of the main peak or right. I had 10 seconds until the next wave slammed me.

            I heard Chris yell something but I couldn’t hear it. He stopped, turned, cupped his palms around his mouth, yelled again, “Huge wave coming!”

            My heart slammed in my chest. I was too tired. Exhausted already from the half hour of previous surfing and paddling and my wave dunking. My arms were beat. I wasn’t paddling as fast as I should have been. I moved as hard as I could to the left, hand down, pull, arm up, dip, hand down, pull, repeat.

            After a wave I crested which was enormous but easily avoidable due to how far left I’d gone, I saw the “huge wave” Chris had yelled about. It was huge. Probably “double over head,” meaning a solid 10 or 11 feet. Most gigantic wave I’d ever seen live, let alone been out in the water to witness. Terror bloomed in my mind. I felt paralyzed. But I kept paddling. I doubled my effort; I paddled so hard my arms felt like rubber.

            “Head out not left,” a loud, deep male voice said behind me. I glanced back, so exhausted I wanted to just lay there on my board a while, lean my head on the white fiberglass and rest, close my eyes, sleep, my legs dangling loosely on the surface of the water.

            It was the older man, on his bone-white, eight or nine foot long board. He was bigger, older, stronger, plus he had a long board, so he paddled three times as fast, easy.

            “You better go, kid, or you’re going to get turned into mincemeat.”

            He was mid-fifties, ancient to me, with long gray matted hair and a pockmarked, deeply lined face. Steely blue eyes and a look which seemed to hint at past violence. He’d been around. I felt that. Intrinsically.

            The wave came at us. Chris had made it, way to my right and far out there. I said a Hail Mary, did the sign of the cross over my chest, jacked my board at the brown beast, and paddled.

            I put energy, anger and determination into the paddling. Deep, hardcore pulls with my tired arms. Like I was trying to defeat death. The wave seemed to only grow. Brown, shining wall of hate. Sunlight beamed off the rising, rushing brown water as it sucked and gnarled. The top of the wave started to slightly spray; there was a nice offshore breeze coming from land and going against the wave, making it curl a bit.

            I was screwed. About 50 feet ahead of me, as the wave started to crest and fall, I heard an Amtrak train hoot on the other side of PCH. I felt like weeping. How stupid I’d been, not following right behind Chris.

            The brown shining water ahead of me was almost perfectly calm and flat. That calm was about to be demolished brutally. The wave got closer, closer, closer. It created a shadow from the crest, the curl rising up and out and above the rest of the curving wall. It thrust its chest out like some bully saying, “What’re you gonna do about it, huh?”

            The wave crashed, boom bang bong, about 10 feet ahead of me. I leapt off my board, breathed deep, dove down as far as I could. Two seconds later I was yanked around underwater again, pulled and lifted and sucked back down, hearing the incredibly loud rumble and rush of wretched crashing white water pummeling the calm brown surface like some army trudging upon an enemy’s encampment.

            I was underwater too long. Four seconds, then six, ten, twelve. I could feel my brain being squeezed, my mouth wanting to open and take in air that didn’t exist.

            Then something miraculous occurred. I felt a hand touch my shoulder, grab me, and another hand around my waist. Suddenly I was being lifted up, up. Seconds later we smashed through the unendurable blackness of underwater, the alien bottom world. I gasped for air. Felt my chest expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. It took me a second to see that it was the older man.

            He looked worried. He jerked his chin, glanced outside, out there. “More,” he said.

            He shoved me onto his thick long board. He was beside me, swimming. He dove underwater, undid my ankle leash, and came back up. “Paddle,” he said.

            I paddled, albeit slow, but with his board I moved faster even in this case than I would have when trying hard on my thin short board. I went slightly left, mostly out.

            I saw more waves coming. And yet I was moving. What about the man? Where was Chris? What about my board?

            The next wave was about eight and a half feet. Thick. Meaty. I paddled. Closed my eyes. Opened them. I glanced to my right. I saw the man swimming hard behind me.

            “Paddle!” he yelled.

            I heard Chris scream something from way out but it was muddled and I couldn’t tell what it was.

            I dug deep and pulled. Damn it. C’mon!

            We must be getting close to the end of the set. There’d be a 10-15 minute break or so between the next set, enough time to paddle inside and get out. I’d be free.

            The wave approached. Brown, sucking, mean. It lifted and rose, started to crest. Were I on my short board I’d be screwed. But with this board I had a chance. I dug down with renewed intensity, paddling so hard I wanted to cry or laugh or both.

            The wave was 25 feet away. It was going to be a close call. Very close. I needed to decide: Ditch the board and dive under again, or try to ride it up the wave’s wall and risk getting pulled down, dragged under.

            I decided to try and make it. I paddled straight at the thing, the big bad brown beast. I rode up the sucking bottom, felt it spin me a bit, up the curving wall, up, up, like some fast natural elevator, up the curling crest, vertical, wait, wait, then broke free (yes!) and landed way up on the top of the wave, making it. I paddled hard at the top, knowing if I stopped now I risked the rear of the curl tugging me backwards with it and ultimately sucking me into the wave, thus reversing all my progress.

            I busted free of the wave’s tugging power grip.

            Two more waves rushed through. I paddled up and over them as well.

            At last, I made it outside. Chris saw me and paddled over. His usually happy face was full of fear, his hazel eyes concerned.

            “Dude,” he said, serious. “Where’s your board?”

            I looked back at the shoreline. The beach was immaculate and empty. The houses lined up one against another and the sun banked off large floor-to-ceiling windows. A lone red truck rambled along PCH. The train tracks were empty of trains. The green thick forest and hills rose above the road.

            I saw my little white board, broken clean in half, one half slightly longer than the other, in the tide a ways down at the beach break, right in front of where my dad was parked in his Dodge, unaware of the anarchy in the water. He was probably immersed in some news story, not knowing that he’d almost lost his only son. My board looked small and silly and far away. It floated on a few inches of brown water, the black leash trailing behind it.

            When I looked back Chris was staring at it, too. “Jesus,” he said.

            “Hey.” We both glanced. It was the man. He swam over, his long gray hair wet against his angular face, those deep age lines, thin lips. He had a light mottled scar across his left cheek I hadn’t noticed before, half an inch long.

            “You saved my life,” I said.

            The man swam close, between me and Chris. “You could have died,” the man said.  

            There was silence. No one said a word. It was one of those early January days in your youth when you realize that life is very short and mostly good but that there are mysteries in this world that you won’t comprehend until much later. This was before the alcoholism came, before girls, before drugs, before getting kicked out of high school, before punk rock, before all the chaos that etched itself into my life like some jagged bowie knife.

            The man nodded. “Let’s go. Inside. Time for you to go in.”

            Chris took the lead, paddling away from the channel and back towards the beach. I followed. The man—he never gave a name—swam behind us, slow, wide strokes. The beach seemed impossibly far away, like we were on some island and were trying to go back to the mainland. But we got closer. And closer. And closer. Finally we arrived. I stood in stomach high water. Knee high. I stood on the beach. Happy. I unleashed, handed the heavy board back to the man. He said, “Be more careful next time,” and walked off, back towards the point we’d just left. I realized he was going back out. Wild.

            I walked over to my two sections of board. Lifted them. Carried one section under each arm. Came back to Chris. He shook his head and we both laughed hysterically. I dropped down to the sand, sat on my butt, legs outstretched before me. Chris sat. We watched the man. A set came in. He paddled up the walls, slightly to the right. The third wave in, he turned, paddled, caught it. He stood up, threw his arms out wide as he rode down the brown shimmering wall, rushed forward, turned sharply, rode ahead and up the wall on his board, and kept going. He carved like a true artist. Rode that wave like a real pro. I felt jealous. But I was glad to be on shore.