Photo - Robyn Levy
I was born unto malnourished hippies. Begot by wanderlust and magnificent genetic code in the bungalonic expanse of Edmonton. My twin sister and I were squirted out onto the floor of Planet Earth during a transient time of our parents’ lives. They were Ontarians drawn west by the promises of iconic mountain chains, cedar grove camping, champagne powder, fruitful wines, and really great bud.
My sister and I drew first light under the long shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Suckling on carbon monoxide and the Chinook trade winds from the rusted floor of an orange van. We examined each other for the first time out of our yolky vessel, feral and itchy footed creatures of the North. By the time we hit the spurred coastline of the west, one of the kind-hearted mongrels who fended for us was heavily moustached, the other a shoeless waif.
The Pacific Ocean served as our pacifiers; twinkling with golden sunlight and dotted with catalinas between the Broken Islands. From my first year onwards, as winter promenaded about to spring, the moustache-ed one would latch my hands to the spongy pink felt foot-straps of his sailboard. I would dangle and drag, precariously hinged to the squeaky pintail of his Bic windsurfer gliding about the chilly arms of the Sunshine Coast. Behind Capitan Moustachio I was fastened, and would gaze up to, in admiration and horror of. Mouth agape we would skip across the Howe Sound on westwardly winds. Boy parts, legs and jubilant shrieks of terror bounced along behind that furry-lipped werewolf. Half criminal, half retarded.
I was raised on the undercurrents of our western coastal shelf with a salty brow, dumb smile, and wind-chapped genitalia. This is how I met the Ocean; and the same spirit in which I enjoyed the slap and tickle of salinic waters during my formative years. As I matured, I spent winters chasing hurricane swell through from Northern Pines to Southern Everglades of the East. I was forever looking outward. Sliding along Humboldt currents in abandoned Peruvian fishing villages. Riding waves alone into barren desert and poverty that only the dust had not forgotten. It was my space travel; an external search for what lay within. Fleeing my heritage on the totally flawed logic that I would find myself elsewhere from home.
So, on a soggy night in November of 2007, I gently pushed myself from the heavily lacquered oaken slab of a little known East Van pissoir. I felt for the suffocated clink of keys under my coatflap and prepared for the sloppy spittle of Autumnal evening in Vancouver. Toque on and flannels shouldered I heaved the heavy & aromatic grain of the Douglas Fir door aside. I skated home past wealthy young people with ugly footwear, angular haircuts, and poor investment choices hanging about their custardly and domestic bones.
My companion was waiting outside, braiding his hands harshly through our gear. I examined the contents of the Jeep that we were to befoul. Pemmican & skateboards, wetsuit legs & woolen undergarments, spot heaters & beans, axe-handles & machetes, notepads & photo gear, cedar kindling & blue tarps spewed from the boot of my car like mutant afterbirth.
“I forgot my pillow.” The photographer packed and spoke haphazardly. He had put two air mattresses and two different barbeques in the trunk. Restless, he picked up my skateboard and pushed off. While he was power sliding and sipping bubblegum slurpee about my block, I dutifully removed said items and returned them to my house. I lobbed some spare propane bottles in the front seat when I noticed the throwing stars. They looked deliberate and of great consequence.
I had shared company with this lens jockey long enough to know that he was a genuine gerrymandering mountebank on the best of accounts. But from an examination of his unkempt appearance, bizarre mating habits, and Oriental weaponry collection I remember believing him to be very untrustworthy. I had gone to his parties before, they were quite dangerous. He was a man who I would later find standing atop the roof of his car pissing onto the windshield; while trying to make a hasty getaway from police officers. He was South African.
I believe the sole qualification on his resume read, “No arrests thus far.” He signed his name as a poorly disguised alias. ‘Dr. Bryant Desmond’ was scrawled in jagged penmanship at the bottom, next to the watermark. It was written on Pondhopper’s Baitshop letterhead. No such enterprise existed. He was perfect.
Bryant was now back at the car, jabbering away madly about something, “…my God, man do you realize what they go through!? They’ve found something. That much is obvious. We need to investigate further.” At this point I realized I would not be returning to work on Monday. We battened down the hatches.
Hundreds of waves later it was 3:30 pm on a sullen & grey December afternoon. Midweek and electorally impoverished we were standing at a hostile surf checkpoint along HWY 14. Not 20 minutes prior I had emerged from a powerful afternoon on the Juan de Fuca. I surfed right after right; studying the pitch, roll, yaw, and drive of my balsa fish until I could only drift amongst bull kelp and tugboats on the outside of the lineup. I listened to the distant lift and lap of shifting cobblestone from below and watched island folk after island folk tear down the wave, drawing beautiful lines from crest to shoulder and back. Heavy spray disintegrated and dusted my cheeks.
I exited the freezing waters and a mixture of minerals, salts, water, and tempered urine ran down my leg. I removed my neoprene exoskeleton and began to stand about. Airdrying there without pants. Bits chapping.
We watched some immaculately sculpted overhead sets trumpet into the bay. Like god’s fat fingers extending out of the Ocean to give us a big fucking high five. They were walling up in succession, upright sea lion men and women gliding along them, dipping hands and arms. Heavy trajection and drive on the proving grounds for unspoken slabs. My rubber sea costume was still at my ankles. My bum as bare as a babe’s.
I had been doing the crawdad kerfuffle; wrestling rubber in the standing semi-prone. Wetsuit stubbornly clinging to my ankles like overloved twins to a parent. Bent over, my hairy brown-eye was warily watching for weird dweebs and lonely lumberjacks. I was hanging and bobbing like a giant slide whistle held by camel knuckles. I continued to struggle against my personal Chinese fingertrap. From behind it all resembled a jumbo jet with temperamental landing gear. Flying low, underneath a distasteful moon.
But this was no time for petty conversation or subtle bragging. There is nothing modest about the enormity of my testes.
Bryant jogged up, Hasselblad in hand, “Sick tubes dood! Mackin’ swell and some styly studes!!!!!” We walked back up and into the woods. Squatters on crown land.
This winter, Bryant and I embraced the province we were raised in, laying foot in soil as rich as Belgian fudge. Camping amongst old growth walrus tusks; driftwood, megaladonian in size. We spent sunrises surfing frigid reef and pointbreaks into 200 foot cedars, mountains rushing to the summit from underneath the sea, and an unsettling & constant fog that cloaked birds of prey. We shared afternoons with old friends; and nightfall in the territory of predators. Together, we found a new haunt.
There were seal pups in the lineup, snow on the beach, and bears sniffing our tents. We fought cold, hunger, and pillowlessness together. We braved vinegary discharge in our wetsuits for some surprisingly well shaped waves on the South Coast. I escaped the runamuck drug smugglers and land slanging lords of Vancouver; Rough Trades and blemished transactions of our burg. We found some semblance of the dream we imagined. We roughed it with empathy to all those people who lost their homes to privatization along the coast. Entering the water with only a smile and leaving the woods with every single detail of what went into our story.
For the 150 days that spread and pull the equinoxes apart from annum to annum we tracked a bizarre species of biped through the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail. From Sooke to Sombrio we studied an unchristian offshoot of humanoid. The focus of our study was a gangly group of geeks, rubberclad arborists who materialized out of milky mists before dawn. Drawn to oceanic, tidal, and solar energies that cause a movement of swell from one side of the planet to the other. They risk hypothermia daily, in order to slip along on one of these waves as it ends its journey.
The wave’s legacy is as short as its lifetime, the most dynamic and temporary canvasses on the planet. The Island folk brush stroke leaves a feather of paint that disappears only seconds after it’s application. Totally untraceable, wholly unique, and not of any traditional value.
I don’t know what to tell you. I still don’t understand their motivations. I don’t have enough time to think about it anymore. I’m usually stretching, pre-dawn. Getting ready for the ebb and flow of forty nine degree Olympian water to flood between rubber and skin. And when that critical time occurs between sets to push off and make the mile dash out to the florid and sweet sunken boil my concerns slip out to sea.
We may be remembered as the squishiest and softest species. Possibly the most terminal or totally destructive. We may be remembered for being possessed with wealth and maniacally chasing around pieces of pulp-ed trees. We may be remembered for having metal and rubber autobodies; exoskeletons that inevitably killed us. None of it may make a difference in the end. Not even black or sound or another lifeform to recount our sins.
But a group of people, a sub-genre of our species, have devoted their lives to embracing the land and oceans in the simplest way they can. This group of people we belong to are the outlandish undone threads of a Renaissance. Unbound by societal standards, adhering only to each other and the wild. Gliding across the open faces of striations from interceding planetary patterns. Actively avoiding income in search of something far more important. A group of aquatic allies who all understand the concept of Connectivity.
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