Running through the low tide, the sun is beating down, sweat is running into my eyes and the ocean has a blue-green, decidedly Caribbean tint to it. Past the chokepoint of the parking lot, where the beachgoers pile up on the sand, languishing like torpid elephant seals. Out along the stretch of beach that most people can't get to, and there are a few guys out, sitting on their boards in a decidedly flat sea, scanning the horizon for waves that aren't coming. The song "Fisherman's Blues" by The Waterboys in my ears, light in my head, and I think of Greg Noll, of all people.
Da Bull, the man whose back we see in the most famous surfing photo ever taken. It's our flag raising on Mount Suribachi, and the interesting thing is, he's not even surfing. Just watching. Looking for possibilities.
That's what we do, really. Surfing means living for possibilities; the clean takeoff, the carving bottom turn, the perfect wave on the perfect day. At some point we really how few and far between those perfect days are - indeed, they may never materialize. And then we get older and we really that maybe the possibilities are enough; that merely knowing that what we imagine for ourselves might have happened, or may still happen, can sometimes be enough to keep us going, trying, striving.
