Paradise lost

One fin or four…or three. Early morning, back of car decisions. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal

I am lying on my back deck, my reading place. Two pelicans glide above the palm trees on the freshening breeze but the swinging crane in the background and the noise from the neighbour’s lawn mower remind me that paradise is lost.

My wetsuit, hung over the rail to dry, speaks to the cooling temperatures of April. Still, I remain dogged, dressed only in my boardshorts as I lie on the sun lounge, grasping for every ray of sunshine that peeks out from behind the thickening clouds.

This morning’s surf was a disappointment, an unpleasant reminder that a shared paradise is nothing more than a shared place, a crowded place; any ‘paradise’ long forgotten amongst the high-rises, restaurants, and postcards. A fading swell from the recent storm brought nothing but anguish and crowds, and a closed beach from the pollution – itself a stark tell-tale of the nearby urban density and industrial inland. Manly has long been crowded – and polluted – but driving around at 6am trying to find a car space, only to end up in the ticketed underground carpark below Coles supermarket, shows how urbanised our surf lifestyle has become, and how far from my idyll I have landed.

Today too I met the curse of choice: which boardshorts do I wear? Which board will I surf? What fin set-up will I go for? Shall I wear boardshorts with my long-sleeve wetsuit top or shall I just wear a spring suit? What do I change into if my boardshorts are wet. I deliberated in the driveway and ran back inside to grab another pair of shorts…just in case. I now had three pairs of shorts with me. Ridiculous.

I brought two boards: my smaller wave board—a five-fin setup which can be run either as a quad or a thruster—and my single fin. A third board is currently being shaped for me. Yes, more choice to come. But what will suit today’s conditions? I love running my smaller board as a quad fin but maybe today it would be better as a thruster. I decide to leave it as it is.

I ran down to the beach, my small wave quad-fin under arm, stared a moment at the various peaks and bolted back to the car park to grab my single fin. A larger set had hit an outer bank. The set waves were still sizeable and had long clean walls. I pictured myself taking off outside and deep, a long, drawn-out soul-arching bottom turn to bring me back up the face where I would set my line, build speed, and race the wall through to the inside section.

It was the wrong choice, but anything would have been wrong this morning. If I watched the surf for a moment longer, I would have realised that it was a freak set, and that the storm had taken the sand out to sea leaving the vast majority of waves to surge over a deep gutter and struggle to break against the fickle backwash from the wave before. My first choice would have been better but not by much.

Choice means options, options mean paths, and some paths lead nowhere. I flashed back to when I was a grommet. I only had one board then (until it was stolen from the caravan park at Crescent Head when I was 18). It was a beat-up second-hand board with snapped fins that had been glassed back together; but I loved that board and paid it off over several months by mowing lawns and washing cars. And I had one wetsuit: a thick grey and light blue unbranded thing that I bought cheap from a local sports store. My choice then was to either surf or not to. There’s something in that.

I know where my current indecision comes from. It’s a complex story and perhaps one for another day, but my life this year has been turned on its head. Today is a forced day off – a ‘mental health day’ in the modern vernacular. Yet my phone keeps beeping, the messages I fear continue to arrive, but I am learning to ignore them. Some phone calls I need to take, but others I do not. I know I can let them go. And I do.

My greatest mistake today was surfing Manly – once again, spoiled for choice on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I needed a beach where I could drive to the sand, where fewer people live and fewer people surf. I needed a place of solitude, a place to be alone where I could feel the ocean around me. I needed a place where I could leisurely park my car and watch the ocean calmly and in peace; to make a good decision and paddle towards the rising sun and sit nestled under the lee of a cliff. I needed to be part of the world around me, and I needed to breathe.

The desire to surf my single fin told me that. It’s my brain’s way of telling me to seek simplicity and return to fundamentals. That’s why single fins are so great; but they are also less forgiving than thrusters, and you don’t get the initial burst of speed that you do with a quad. A single fin to me equals time. You don’t surf a single fin in anger, or in frustration. You don’t surf a single fin in an unbearably crowded line-up at high tide with shot banks. But something had made me put it in the car this morning; and something had made me run back and get it.

*

My friends had paddled in and gone to work. I stayed for a moment or two longer, caught a wave in and walked down the beach. There was a quieter bank at South Steyne which I stared at and stared at and stared at in my continuing indecision. I eventually paddled out and spent the next half hour chatting to a surfer from Indiana (just consider that for a moment!). There were other surfers nearby, but it was really just me and ‘Indiana’ picking off a few waves in turn, checking to see if the other wanted the approaching wave; laughing about how dodgy the surf was, and chatting and relaxing. The guy put a smile on my face, and it reminded me that wherever you go as a surfer, you’ll always find someone to share a few waves with, a song to sing around a campfire, and a couple of whispered directions to a ‘secret’ spot. Surfers belong to a tribe, but as localised as it can be, it’s also a global one.

I don’t know the guy’s name, I don’t know what he does for a living, I don’t know how long he’s surfed for or how long he’s been in Australia, but I’d like to think he surfed today for a reason. I often wonder if people are ‘sent’; if they’re put in your path for a purpose, even if for only a few moments. I had stared at that second peak for way too long, lost in my morning’s indecision, but I eventually paddled out to try and put a shine on an otherwise disappointing session. I’m glad I did. I left the beach a lot happier than I otherwise would have. Paradise may be lost, but whatever is lost can also be found.