Surfing, 1975, by Niloc

From MemoryArchive

Who: Niloc
What: Surfing and life
When: 1975
Where: Perth, Australia

The smell and vision of the ocean, saline and strong against the surreal blonde bluish backdrop of the coastline, made me stop and stare furrowed eyed ahead, into this magnificent landscape.

I felt my psyche both caressed and uplifted by this all pervasive natural sublime life form that lay before me. Subsisting eternally within its prehistoric animated ecological setting, this visible panorama, where water's edge meets the land both gave reverence to the very environment before me and enriched my fractious spirit.

In the midst of this all-encompassing canvas, I’m attempting, for what seemed a thousand times with no success, to ride a wave. With each failed attempt, frustration sets in; that day it seemed to me that maybe I was the only teenager on earth who couldn’t surf, sure I had kneeled, stood for a fraction of a second or two and then sunk with familiar futility into the sea, but I wanted and had to have the full ride. The simple balancing motions and finesses required, mixed with ability to decipherer wind and wave movements, were at that stage just mystifying messages to me, but I persisted.

I looked with annoyance down at my board. It was way too skinny, had far too many dings, but I was too stubborn to quit, my sole aim that day was to stand up and to simply ride a wave, traverse for the first time in my life a movement of nature. Against all these odds I turned back to face the oncoming westerly again, if nothing else I was somewhat stubborn and now even more intractable in my desire.

A giant of a skinhead, an iniquitous lad from the UK, purportedly from Wolverhampton who went to my High School had swapped the battered board I’m attempting to ride for a black jacket of mine that he had taken a fancy to; I heard he stole the seafaring plank from behind some flats up in Rivervale. At the time I thought it was a cool deal. He believed the jacket looked “boverish”, but it was far too small for him. But a deal was a deal. I was happy with the transaction at the time but at this very moment part of me would probably swap the board for the jacket and wrap it over my head and run back into the sweltering blacktop and tarred reaches of my neighbourhood, forever doomed to suburbia.

Anyway I’m struggling big time, whilst glancing over my shoulder, to even sit with some sort of balance on the battered board. I sat looking at the incoming waves, when all of a sudden I feel a strong pull, dragging me back into the cascading stream of wind driven water droplets. As I am drawn back, below me - beneath the surface of the ocean millions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules from the action of the air stream above were piling down upon each other and when the balance finally toppled as the wind sculls landward the water structure falls forward, forming waves. I kick off once again paddling hard as usual but this time I sensed something different.

My next motions see me unexpectedly semi-kneeling then standing up. Was the full ride happening? Emotions of fear and ecstasy mixed together and the power and sudden weight transfer of body, board and crashing wave are taking me to the shore and I’m smiling wide eyed and hairy like a dog on fire, screaming “whoa Ahh!” all the way down the surf, floating and moving with the pure everlasting natural energy of the ocean for the first time.

The might of this most powerful wind driven aquatic formation is quick and powerful and swiftly moves me forward crouching in a seemingly – automated fashion. I rise, grinning blissfully in the tidal breaker with the salt water dripping into and out of my nose and mouth and for the first time I catch a whiff of a dozen nautical smells from a dozen lands and my heart is pumping.

I spot a glint of the sun’s glistening rays - shimmering on the surface as I slide down and cut slowly right, all this in a singular moment in time and I gaze at the water, land and sky around me as I moved on the surface of the planet and know above all else, that one singular thing is true - that I am not alone in this complex cosmos.