Climbing up the Point, and Staying True to a Lifestyle
I want to tell you a story about surfing, but not the typical story you may be thinking of. No giant waves, or travels to the ends of the earth here, just the everyday journey, and all the little adventures, some more grand and memorable than others, that keep us pursuing this crazy, awesome, and at many times tricky lifestyle.
I also want to try and draw some parallels between surfing and the other outdoor action adventure sports, and how I have learned from them and their parishioners and how what I have learned from that world has kept me afloat in my own swell addicted subsistence. I have to be honest, in the past I never really saw surfing connected to any of those ‘other’ outdoor pursuits in any real legitimate ways, but this all started to change for me when I encountered a different kind of adventurer and made different kinds of friends who had different kinds of admiration and respect for the outside world. I also need to back up and paint a picture of one young valley surf rat wandering around the Southern California coast in the late 90’s.
I grew up just inland from the beaches of Malibu, and therefore I was forever and will always be a ‘valley’ surfer. Nevertheless, my friends and I were able to outrun the sprawling oven that is the San Fernando Valley once we got wheels of our own. The first day the first one of us got a car, we started to explore the coast. Stretching out from the shores of the Santa Monica Mountains and hitting as many spots as we could, looking to build confidence in a totally wild ocean universe while at the same time finding a spot amongst a lineup of hotshot local kids and burly old men. This brought me to the end of our high school years, ready to move on to college, and even more freedom to surf. All fun and games for me until one day when I came home from surfing a wind blown summer day at Zuma beach and my dad greeted me at the door informing me that my brother would not be coming home. He had been on holiday with a friend and died in a horrific jet ski accident. He was just 16 and I was 18. Needless to say, my life changed drastically in that moment when my father uttered those words to me while I was standing in the doorway of our house. From that moment on I made a promise to myself to live the life that I wanted to, the way I wanted to. I decided that I would become a competent surfer, whatever it took, and I would live that life, because who knew what could happen tomorrow.
Hanging around a bunch of other wannabe surf rats, it wasn’t hard to find company for this lifestyle. As I worked my way through a college degree and delivered pizzas at night, my friends and I surfed up and down the California coast, from Baja to Big Sur. After college, I found myself living that life. However, at some point after too many restaurant jobs, I realized that I would have to make a change and create a more solid foundation if I was to pursue this life. The rent needed to be paid, I needed to get a ‘real job’ and surfing was starting to get in the way of some of that. Emotionally and spiritually it gave back so much, but when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and you come from a working class family, lets just say I didn’t have the #vanlife option. At the same time it seemed like every weekend there were more and more people surfing and I needed a break, a way out, and a way up in life.
With some persistence, and a whole lot of luck, I finally got a stable gig when I started working for the National Park Service at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. I had also found what would become, my people, new friends, parkies. People who also had college degrees and didn’t spend their entire woke hours thinking and talking about the surf, some of them surfed too, but they had other hobbies and passions. They were one could say, a bit more well rounded, than the crew I was used to hanging out with. They had families, graduate degrees, curiosity about the wider world, and a desire to explore the natural world. During and after work I started to find solace and little bouts of adventure as I wound my way through the chaparral covered trails and interacted with my extremely passionate and intelligent coworkers. One day I might be in the office standing between cubicles talking with the Mountain Lion biologist, and the next discussing native plant restoration with the botanist out in the field. At the same time I devoured the natural history guides and learned how to identify local birds by their calls. I hiked the trails around my seasonal ranger residence situated at the top of a large and wild canyon and at some point, became a naturalist. I was luckier still, because our park was literally situated along the coast of Malibu. I was able to continue my surfing life and infuse it with this newfound knowledge and respect for the ecosystems surrounding it all. I was beginning to lose that jaded feeling that had started to creep in, that one which afflicts many a So Cal resident and surfer. I began to understand that I could live a more full life outdoors if I diversified my enjoyment in it, although it wasn’t until I would get the chance to work in another park and in a place I would come to know intimately, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, that I would fully understand what it takes to hold it all together.
Amongst the mixed conifer forest with its towering giant sequoias and the granitic rock of the Sierra Nevada, is where I was introduced to mountain people, and the mountain life; backpacking, climbing, cooking out over the coals, slacklining, dirt bagging, some real van lifers, and the “backcountry”, or to use the more poetic term, Wilderness. I digested all this new vocabulary with the good old-fashioned camaraderie we have as park service employees around the campfire night after night under a star filled sky.
I went on to work two full summer seasons at that park and meet a whole new cast of characters. For those two summers, I rarely left the mountains and surfed only a couple of times. My new friends would introduce me to even more adventurous mountain people and on one of those days, while we were camping up in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park, I found myself sitting around a fire with legendary climber Ron Kauk. Ron was a mutual friend of my good friend Patrick from Kings Canyon. Patrick was back then a bit of a wild man. He was also a park biologist who was living in his Westfalia VW van who was well known at that time for bombing his Sector 9 skateboard down high elevation Sierra roads. So there we all were one cool Yosemite morning, warming up as the sun rose and flashed its narrow rays towards us, Ron stoking the fire, talking about the local egg supply to his campsite, how he was reading Lao Tzu and looking for more balance and substance in his life after pursuing the full on ‘dirt bag’ lifestyle for a couple of decades. I didn’t really know who Ron was, but my friends had told me that he was a legend in the climbing world and I could tell that he had a sense of wisdom and calmness about him, so I sat listening attentively as he talked about his laid-back summer routine that year. He said that he was living in the campground as a park volunteer, doing some park clean ups and basically just being a goodwill ambassador while doing a little climbing here and there. After a full life of hardcore Sierra and Yosemite climbing and off grid living, he seemed to be happy with his perch up there in Toulumne. While at the same time he acknowledged that he didn’t have too much to show for it all. He was basically living out if his van, he had no family, no wife, and that morning he was talking about his routine of top rope climbing, He explained how he and a buddy could just drop a rope without the need for any other crew, and then literally pull themselves up steep gently-sloping granite faces by putting one hand in front of the other, up, and up. Simple, he said. I said that that sounds a lot like us surfers, as we paddle through the ocean putting one hand in front of the other paddling on top of the water, up the point. In fact it was the words of one of surfings’ most respected sages, Gerry Lopez, which had inspired me so many years ago when I read them in The Surfer’s Journal, where Gerry wrote ‘that surfing was 99.9% paddling’. When I read those words back then I had realized that I could become a capable surfer, it was as simple as putting one hand in front of the other. I just needed to keep paddling. Ron and I made some more connections on the two parallels between surfing and climbing and I left the mountains inspired by this soft-spoken guy who had managed to continue to pursue an outdoor lifestyle, with some sacrifices for sure, but with a clear vision, which I was still searching for as I tried to keep a grip on sustaining the life I wanted to live.
Eventually, I would return to southern California and the Santa Monica Mountains and continue to work for many years there, carving out a better than average surfing life. I had weekdays off, the only true way for a southern California surfer to survive, and I continued to learn about the ecology of my home, and share the fascinating things about it with others. And because my whole approach had changed many years ago up in the Sierras with those mountain people, I felt more prepared to sustain my connection to the surf and the outdoor world. When I look back on my time surfing around that period, after those summers in the Sierra, I remember some of those experiences and certain sessions being so rich, so vivid. I had learned to be patient, wait for swells, and for the time that was right for me. I dialed in my surf equipment, and when I had days off, I’d focus on getting out into the water, and just focus on paddling. One particular session, that I look back on often, took place at one of those surf breaks that only come to life a few times a year when the conditions are just right, and at this particular spot on this particular day, the tide was low and the swell was West and I was there. Somewhere in Ventura County surfing a sketch reef/ point wave. I’m not sure what brought me to that spot on that late afternoon day, and I don’t remember all of the details, but I do remember that it was one of those rare days when I had the skills and the equipment to take advantage of the conditions at hand. Flying down wall after wall of olive green water in the diminishing twilight, riding my quad-fin Fish, the fins at times barely clearing the shallow cobblestones that make up the reef, I felt electric, alive. Catching all those waves, paddling back up the point after each one, and then riding another wave deeper into the darkness of the oncoming twilight. The rhythm of pulling my body up the point after each wave, paddling higher up the point, another wave, then paddling back up, paddling up, and up, as it got darker, and darker. It was like a dream.
There is no denying that surfing has become very popular, many spots are just too crowded much of the time, and some of the romance is gone. It can be easy these days to find yourself on a narrow-minded approach to the sport and to life. It’s those little adventures in the mountains, in the ocean, and my memories of them, that have kept me going. I’ve had to struggle at times to string them all together as I reached into my late 30’s with a wife and child on the way. And I think a lot of people don’t understand just what it takes to stay focused and maintain a legitimate spot in the lineup of the surfing world decade after decade. Had it not been for my time in the mountains and taking a break from the whole myopic surfing world, I’m not sure that I would have had the clarity to stay focused, and have the patience and discipline to wait for those few magical moments, that can often arrive intermittently and sometimes are spaced years apart.
Today, at 40, I think of my surf sessions now like mini expeditions, and as my wife and I head off and out of the bustling city over to the coast, our two young boys seated behind us, I know that we will probably find ourselves at a very busy beach, with our main preoccupation being finding a good spot for them to play. I won’t even look at the swell charts or tides, but while I’m there sitting in the sand I’ll think about those days when the waves and the conditions will link up again, and I’ll be ready for them. In the near future, if I’m lucky, I’ll find myself paddling, paddling, maintaining that connection to the wild and beautiful outdoor world, one hand in front of the other.
