CHAPTER 54

 

Drew looked out over the horizon. Sitting on his surfboard with late morning tropical sun bathing over his back, he let his body soak in the warmth.

He had paddled out through the channel of deep water between the two northern most reef breaks at the campsite. The paddle out worked his arms and shoulders hard, as he navigated his board up and then down the silently advancing blue legions.

This must be how ancient warriors felt when battle was imminent. The first trial was the journey to the battlefield. Survive that, dog. Then you could die in battle.

The surf today was charging from the northwest. Faces were 6-8 feet. After doggedly paddling on a diagonal, he'd finally positioned himself at the headland of a subtly defined point that wrapped to his north into a quiet, palm tree lined cove. The deep water inside the cove shimmered, sun-beams playfully bouncing off the surface.

From the vantage atop his board, he enjoyed visibility that permitted at least ten miles of uninterrupted turquoise. The darker blue horizontal lines gliding along the surface were a harbinger of sets approaching from the distance. Yes! His heart pumped with adrenaline, as it always did when a session was about to start.

Drew Fletcher continued the conversation in his head, as he often did when surfing alone. I am a world class athlete. Been surfing in all conditions imaginable. OOOHHH! Why do I still get butterflies on the paddle out? The responsive realization came quickly to him. Because. I just do, like any other athlete does before the big game or competition.

 Drew had come to recognize the jitters. In a way he liked it. He realized it was a natural, healthy feeling and let it flow through him as he concentrated on the approaching set.

Let’s surf, Flecky.

 Abruptly, Drew was awash with a strange, uncomfortable feeling. Fuck! He looked around quickly, shuddered, but did not let it disrupt his focus. The seasoned surfer kept his gaze fixed on the set of waves approaching from the west. But something was amiss. 

No time to sketch!  Time to surf.

He suddenly pulled his board through his legs, simultaneously springing into a prone position and allowing the buoyancy of the board to propel him forward while paddling in a sprint. He had positioned himself slightly further outside than he'd needed, but adjusted. His timing was exact, and as he arrived in the spot he knew from experience to be the perfect take off point, he turned and paddled fast into and down the face of the thick blue swell, instantly springing to his feet.

 Dropping down to the bottom, he could feel the wind blowing up the face of the wave, spraying water pellets into his eyes. It blinded him, but only for a second. His vision now unimpeded, Drew rode down and pointed his board on an angle to the left, putting his back to the arching indigo of wave behind him. His arms instinctively spread—winged out to either side and furnishing balance—while his knees bent. He compressed his body into a tight crouch. Upon reaching the precise place at the bottom of his drop, Drew exploded up and out of the compact pose, angling to his left. Now he was flying across the surface of the smooth water, and aiming for a point up ahead on the wave's wall.

 Down the line from him, the water stood up, steep and erect, level across the top, unfaltering in its cobalt perfection. It moved with astonishing speed and force further and further down the beach, in a race to extinction. Drew must ride with the wave, harness its speed, and use its power to execute the aerial escapades and power maneuvers that set him apart from mere mortal surfers. He knew it was counterintuitive to search for synergy with something that is so much more powerful than a man—and could potentially crush the life out of him—but he was also certain that without understanding this, and rendering the necessary respect for and cooperation with mother ocean, riding her children would be impossible.  

Racing along the ocean's smooth surface, and while gaining speed and forward momentum, the point of Drew's surfboard followed as he steered up—up the face of the wave and then through the horizontal plane on top and into mid air! He soared through the air now, moving slowly counterclockwise as the nose of his board passed twelve and approached eleven. His feet continued to go up, past eye level—fixed as if with glue to the deck of his surfboard—until he abruptly pulled the nose of his board down with his front foot, simultaneously pushing the tail of his board up with his back foot. The point of the surfboard rushed in a blur down past nine and then seven. His board and body followed and he was coursing back down with the tumbling white of the breaking wave, standing atop a white avalanche of foam and water.

Quickly he was past the white and it was all blue beneath his board again. He wiggled his butt and began again to crouch as he approached the very bottom. Whosh! He powered again back up, to his left—forward momentum increasing as he now placed the board in a slot between the bottom blue and the breaking white at the top, while racing the breaking wave. Drew was now moving parallel with the top of the heaving swell—parallel also to the beach—with his back to the wave. Then its falling, clear curtain suddenly engulfed him.

 He stood calmly inside the bowels of a breaking, moving, aqua creature and time slowed to a crawl. He marveled at the opaque view of the tree-lined shore on the other side of the wave's lip, like viewing life through a prism—marveling also at the majestic silence. Then he aimed ahead at the clearness to his left, at the diminishing eye on the other side of which lay his escape back to the world. Whosh again, and he was out of the tube! "My Good GOD!" he exalted out loud.

 Then, an interuption. That sense of discomfort came over him again, suddenly and subtly. It happened a few moments ago too, just before he took off. There, he felt it again, looked around. It was not shocking. Nevertheless, something was…out of place? Finally, out of the corner of his right eye, Drew could see it in the air.

 A majestic, winged carrier glided—high enough above so as to leave no doubt that it would be touched with not even a drop of this ocean water. It moved with grace and power that evoked reverence for it’s efficiency of movement, it’s fearlessness while in flight, as though it was a constituent part of this calm blue sky.

 Drew could see it clearly now, even as the man glided over the water, so did the bird. The feathered creature could see him as well. Drew raised his right arm into the sky, cautiously saluting the jet-black flyer.

A falcon—ebony feathered, red beaked—acknowledged Drew’s show of homage soaring closer and closer, down toward Drew, until they were flying together. Drew could only marvel at this. They glided along the sunny coast in harmony with a storm swell that had traveled thousands of miles to arrive at this beach, at this time. At this impromptu instant, Drew and the stately bird of prey painted a moment in his memory that could never be recreated, and that no other person could ever hope to understand from the mere description of it.

  

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