Farewell, Dear Friend

Earlier this week the one hundredth and final issue of The Surfer's Path magazine was pushed through my letterbox.

The arrival of the centenary issue should have been one of celebration but instead it was, for me at least, a sad occasion as I read the accompanying letter from the magazine's publishers.  I first picked up a copy of The Surfer's Path sixteen years ago as a young teenager.  It was issue 6 and it had a dark green cover if I remember correctly.  It had a lot of words in it and different photos to the sort that I was used to seeing in the other surf magazines and it cost a bit more too, so my young, short-attention-span, bright colours and fast music angled brain probably didn't really get it.  As I matured and my understanding of surfing and the culture that surrounds it developed I would pick up a copy of The Surfer's Path more and more often - a look at the bookshelf at my Dad's house where my collection of early editions is archived would probably be a good indicator of how my surf-centric brain developed: the frequency of more tabloid, "here and now", surf publications tails off to be replaced by a magazine that carried much broader, deeper content.  This was a magazine that spoke to my absolute and all consuming obsession with riding waves and started in some way to satiate my appetite to know more.  It's pages were filled with trips to places that I'd often never heard of - far-flung corners of the map where there might be waves but there was definitely a story, sparking in me a wanderlust for far-away coastlines that has had an enormous impact upon my adult life, and for which I am incredibly thankful.  It taught me about the value of the marine environment, where waves come from and about the history of surfing.  The Surfer's Path taught me that there was more to this whole watery escapade; much more.

I'll pull-up short of descending into an essay on the knock-on effects on "bigger picture" surf culture of big surf companies cutting their marketing budgets and the rise of free surf content on the internet.  Now's not the time or place.  What I will say, however, is that the world of surfing is going to be a bit thinner, a bit flimsier and without doubt a bit shallower without The Surfer's Path spreading interesting and thought provoking articles with beautiful images selected for their artistic merits and their story-telling qualities.  This good stuff will certainly still be around, but we might have to search a little harder for it and may not be able to pick it up, curl the edges of the pages, stuff it in a bag before a bus trip or put it on a shelf to revisit in many years time.

Thank you to The Surfer's Path for informing, entertaining and inspiring, to it's editor Alex Dick-Read for your service to surf culture and to all of the photographers, writers and subjects who appeared in it's pages for showing me just what's possible if you put your head down and paddle hard.

Super Sand

I turned out one of my pockets earlier and dumped half a handful of sand all over the floor.  This isn't an uncommon scenario - not only does sand get in my pockets, but it seems to end up in my wallet, fill my socks (when I wear them), and sometimes rains down from my hair when I shake my head.  Ordinarily it's a massive inconvenience, but today I realised just how good sand is and how important it is to me.  I'd miss it if I didn't spend each summer with my bed full of the stuff.    

Sand is different all over the world, and if you look at a load of it through a microscope each grain varies enormously from the next.  It's just ground up bits of rock and minerals, with the most common constituent in temperate latitudes being silica in the form of quartz crystals (which look incredible through a microscope), whilst in the tropics calcium carbonate from ground up coral reefs and shellfish make the beaches tour-brochure white.  Black sand is normally found on coastlines where there is a lot of volcanic basalt rock.

 Sand moves around a lot, and not just by hitching a ride in my pockets.  In the littoral zone waves push it up the beach and pull it back down, shifting untold amounts of it along shorelines each year.  This movement of sand forms the lumps, bumps, and eventually the sand banks that cause waves to break on the beach, so you can see all of a sudden where my appreciation for the stuff comes from.  There is nothing quite so good as some well organised grains of sand.  Whilst on a University field trip five other students and I had to try to hold a sand trap in a French shorebreak to assist with research into the movement of sediment.  We had to keep repeating the measurements, however, because each successive wave knocked at least four of us off our feet and washed us and all of the apparatus up the beach on our backs.  Sand also carries well on the wind, as can be seen in the Pyrenees where the south facing sides of some of the mountains are tinged yellow with sand that has been blown north from the Sahara, and it's even been said that Saharan sand has, on occasions, fallen from the skies over South America having been carried by the trade winds across the Atlantic.

Sand is pretty special stuff.  We once used it to measure our most precious resource - time.  

It covers massive areas of our planet both above and below the water and has a big role in shaping how we have fun, whether with a bucket and spade building sandcastles on the beach as grommets or by facilitating how the waves that we surf as adults break.  For that, I can deal with having to tidy up the piles of it that fall from my body and clothing at regular intervals.

A Letter of Thanks

Dear Mother Ocean/The Seven Seas/The Big Blue,

This letter is long overdue, because in all this time I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to say thank you.

Thanks for all the good times. Thanks for all the good waves.

Thanks for being so enthralling and for captivating me ever since I can remember, for being so full of wonder and living up to all of the hype. Thanks for always keeping a little back to keep me guessing though, wondering what’s still hiding beneath the surface.

Thank you for always being there, wherever I go; you’re always there when I look out of the window in the morning and you’re still there at the end of the day and I find your constant presence comforting. It’s so nice of you to give the sun a place to sleep at night.

Thank you for making the “sea air” and the positive ions that blow on the wind, keeping me cheerful.

Thank you for being so floaty.

Thank you for getting me from A to B so often, for allowing me to get around a bit and see other places.

Thanks for being so accepting, supportive and accommodating, but thanks also for scaring me. Whenever I get a bit too big for my boots you’re always there to put me back in my box and keep me humble. Sometimes you terrify me, other times you bounce me off the bottom, hold me under, pull my limbs in wrong directions and disorientate me, but I know that it’s all for my own good. I have enormous respect for you, more than I can articulate here.

When we have a bad day and don’t quite see eye to eye I know that more often than not it’s the wind’s fault, not yours.

Thanks for making my landings soft.

Thanks for dinner the other night, and for all those other times that you’ve provided me with something to eat.

Cheers for letting me wash in your waves. And for being such a good wake-up, I’d rather you than a cup of coffee any day.

I really like the way you’re always cool on a hot day and, most of the time, not as cold as the air in winter. You’re never as extreme in your temperatures and I really like that. On that note, nice one for regulating global temperatures.

Good work absorbing all of the carbon that humans release, I’m sorry that the job has fallen largely on you to do. I’m sorry too, on behalf of the human race, for all of the plastic. For what it’s worth I try to do my bit to remove the bits that I see from in and around you and I know many others do too.

Thank you for being there when I need a bit of quiet time to sit and reflect, for helping me to find the answers that I seek and not passing judgment on me.

Thanks for always being more interesting to watch than TV.

Thanks for all of the beach treasure, the shells and the seaglass and webbles that you make, the flotsam and jetsam that you carry to shore. Thanks for making sand, even though it fills my pockets and always ends up in my bed. It’s a nice little reminder that I always take away with me.

Thank you for delivering messages in bottles.

Thanks for being such a great horizon.

Thank you for giving me focus, drive and purpose. Thank you for giving me so many good memories.

Thanks for being such a good friend.

I appreciate it all more than you know.

Images, from the top down:

• Quiet Sunday afternoon, Playa Garza, Costa Rica
• Under the sea, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii
• Geographe Bay, WA
• School of baitfish, Hawaii
• Serenity, Sri Lanka
• Playing with the waves, Cabarita, Australia
• Sunset at Playa Guiones, Costa Rica
• The infamous "Neptune at Horta" - better than TV.