It
was late summer 2018 when I took my second solo trip to Oahu.
I was 46, a
professor, and mom of three young adults when I shuffled across the sand,
journal and pen tucked under my arm.
Per editor’s orders, I’d returned to the
island to study surfing for my upper-middle-grade novel, Taylor Before and After—and I was all-in to break the code of the secret world and bring it
to young readers.
Before
leaving, I’d spent a year browsing blogs, comparing tide charts, studying
underwater footage of reefs, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube clips of
backside tube riding.
A research writing instructor, I was well-versed in the
academic approach to gathering info: read, filter, repeat. So, I’d gone
cover-to-cover through Surfer Magazine’s articles and advertisements for
wax, wet suits, leashes, energy drinks.
The
greats—Slater, Machado—in Robert Redford’s Momentum Generation exemplified
dedication. They’d broken arms, noses, and shoulders; gotten reef rash; busted
up boards and relationships. They’d aged, had families, jobs, and charities,
and still, they devoted their lives to catching the Big One—or simply just riding
whichever wave came along.
Not
everything I found was good. For a sunny, coconut-kissed adventure, the sport has
a carbon footprint. Environmental concerns rose up repeatedly: sunscreen,
polyurethane, resin, neoprene, coastal development.
Certain
sponsors have come with questionable ethics. Globalization, outsourcing, and
child labor have not rendered surfing immune. I traced drug routes from Mexico
that fed into the island’s addiction, abuse, and poverty. Once a local pastime,
surfing has become a fast-growing, worldwide industry, generating celebrity
athletes, media, tourism, apparel, and gear, yet the media misrepresentation of
surfers is alarming. The New York Times’ ‘Surfing’s Dark Side on Oahu’s
North Shore’ gave a glimpse into racism, appropriation, turf wars, gangs, and
violence.
Sometimes,
I cried. Surfing stole young lives—talented, promising ones—from its most
dedicated backdoor riders, goofyfeet. Watching Lydie Irons, weeks before having
her baby, throwing orchids into the paddle-out for her late husband Andy, was
heartbreaking.
For
him, Foo, Chesser, Joyeaux, the ocean, the culture, claimed a high cost. With
risk that great, I decided, the reward must be enormous.
I
had read books like Coleman’s Eddie Would Go, and watched films
like Bustin’ Down the Door. I had information. What I wasn’t getting was
the experience. ‘What does it FEEL like?’ I’d asked my neighbor, who drives
to the coast as the construction week ends, to ride the waves Jerry Lopez once
ruled, with his sixteen-year-old daughter. He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked
up at the sky, eyes shining. And, he started laughing.
Finally,
when I poured over William Finnegan’s 2016 Pulitzer-Prize winning Barbarian
Days: A Surfing Life, I got an inkling of what I wasn’t getting—that unless
you surf, you don’t really get it. That would come to be a theme in Taylor—the
tension between Taylor’s older brother and their dad, the family’s lack of
understanding his passion. ‘Come on, Grom!’ Eli calls to Taylor from the
water, ‘Next wave has your name on it!’
I
wanted to know what was so powerful about standing on a board on some water,
and no amount of reading was getting me there. I had to DO it. But, because I
am truly un-coordinated, it was going to be hard. I postponed falling off,
getting salt water in my nose, hitting my head, being sore all week, being
laughed at.
The
day before my departing flight, I ended up at The Hilton Hawaiian Village,
which, it turned out, had a concrete lagoon! There were no waves, no reef, but
stacks of paddle boards. That would do!
Pushing
the board halfway between shore and
water, I reminded myself this was in no way actually surfing. It was
getting on a board on the water, not competing in the Triple Crown.
Laying
belly-down without even pushing off, I immediately started laughing! I had
never felt a peace, a thrill, like it! If laying was this good, I wondered,
what would actually standing feel like?
I
paddled out past the island, (where I couldn’t fall on
anyone) and, legs shaking, I GOT UP!!!! I was up, and laughing like the biggest
fool who ever lived! And three Australian sisters as curvy as me were laughing too!
We were laughing together, and I was SO PROUD of my AMAZING, athletic, brave
SURFING self…I completely toppled over in the water!
When
I got back to Oregon, I replayed the scene, the sound, the feel, over and over.
I still really don’t know anything about surfing. And I don’t see myself in a
line-up at Wimea anytime soon. But something changed me after hitting up the
lagoon. I got it, how my neighbor laughed up at the sky when I’d asked him what
surfing’s like. It’s indescribable. It’s not a thing or a sport. It’s being—something
you have to try for yourself, in a style that’s exactly your own.
A
National Endowment of the Humanities fellow in Hawaii, Jennie Englund lives in
Oregon and teaches research writing and firefighters. Taylor Before and After is her first book. Connect with Jennie via:
Twitter: @englund_jennie
Instagram:
JennieEnglundBooks
