Wave Warrior (3 page)

“Son, when your dead grandmother appears to you after the worst wipeout of your life and tells you what to do, you better take the advice.”

“I would have quit after that.”

“I did. For two weeks. But it didn't take. I just decided to ride ten-foot waves instead of forty-foot waves. My close encounter with the hereafter gave me a new appreciation of life.”

“So now you're a kahuna?”

“No, man. Now I'm an old kook with an old dog and a bunch of old boards. And I came here to Nova Scotia to...” He stopped himself and looked away.

“To what?”

Ray coughed. “To teach a chubby kid with a black eye how to catch a wave and stand up.”

“When?”

“Whenever the rain stops.”

The rain stopped on Saturday night. Sunday was golden. I was up early and rode my bike to the beach without eating anything. It was only eight o'clock but there were already dozens of cars in the parking lot, mostly surfers. This was not good. I wasn't going to attempt surfing in front of city surfers who already knew what they were doing. I didn't see Ray's van anywhere. And there was Tara, taking her board down from the top of her
friend's car. She already had her wet suit on and she looked stunning. I guess I was staring at her when she turned around. She said nothing.

“Hi,” I said nervously. “Good waves?”

“Awesome,” she said. “Shoulder high. Glassy. You gonna surf?”

“Dunno,” I answered. “Have a good one.”

I turned around and decided that, for sure, I should go home. I was ready to handle the pain of whatever wipeout was coming my way, but not the humiliation of Tara and the others watching me.

I was pedaling slowly out of the parking lot, thinking, no Ray, no way. So I was off the hook.

But just then Ray's van swung into the beach lot and drove straight at me. It stopped inches from my front wheel. Ray leaned out. “Ben, I'm stoked. What a swell. Get in. You're gonna show me that secret spot you were talking about.”

“I don't think...” I began. “

That's right, gremlin, don't think. There's no time for thinking. This is what I came to
Nova Scotia for. I've been down the coast a few miles. I can see the possibilities, but I bet you can steer me to the right spot. The beach here is gonna be too crowded for me. Put your damn bike on my rack on the back of the van.”

So I strapped my bike on the back and got in.

“You're riding shotgun now, partner. Just point me to surfing paradise.”

“East,” I said.

“East it is.”

Not far past Three Fathom Harbor is the roadway to an old broken-down farmhouse and barn. You could drive down there and park, and if you walked a ways up onto the eroded headland, you could see the waves. But unless you were right there, you wouldn't think it was a good surf spot. No one surfed there and you couldn't see it from the road. I took Ray there. My grandfather had first brought me here when I was a kid to watch for whales on a warm summer day. Now it was my turn to share this place with Ray.

He stood speechless.

“It's a point break,” I said. “A left.”

“It's flawless,” Ray said. “What do you call this place?”

“I just call it the Farm.”

“A bit dull for a name, don't you think?” he said. “It needs something better than that.”

“Right.”

“Now we surf. Lesson number one.”

Mickey D sat down on his haunches at the top of the headland and looked out to sea as Ray and I ran back to his van. Yeah, I had to run to keep up with a seventy-five-year-old dude from California.

Ray tossed me a wet suit and some boots. “It'll be a little tight. You tuck that baby fat in there and it'll work. And remember, you can't sink with it on. Neoprene will float you. Trust it.”

I was both excited and nervous. The suit felt really weird. “Ray, I don't know the first thing about surfing. I only tried that once.”

“You only need to know one thing. You can do this. It may not be pretty, but you can do this.”

We were walking across the old pasture, full wet suits on, longboards under our arms. The sun beating down and no wind at all. Mickey D watched from above as we scrambled over the big rocks by the shoreline and began to paddle out.

“This is perfect,” Ray told me. “We follow this deep channel out to the point. Won't even get our hair wet.”

I was lying down, paddling hard and slipping sideways, not able to stay centered or balanced. When I slipped off, Ray would stop paddling and wait.

“Good plan, Ben. Get a little water in the suit. Get the juices of the old Atlantic swirling around. How's it feel?”

“Like ice.”

“Cold, huh? Who'd think the sea would be so cold here the first weekend of July?”

I climbed back onto my board.

“Wave warriors never mind the cold,” he said.

What was with this wave warrior thing? All I wanted was to get through the day without dying.

When we reached the takeoff zone directly in front of the point, Ray said nothing. He faced the shoreline, paddled deep, caught a smooth five-foot wall of water and dropped down the face of it like it was the easiest thing in the world. And he was gone. I tried sitting up on my board but fell off again into the icy water. Four waves passed under me as I got back on my board. The leash kept it from floating away. God bless the man who invented surf leashes.

When Ray returned, he looked ten years younger. “The Farm, eh? I rename this Nirvana Farm.”

“Like the band?”

“Nah. Like where the Buddhists go when they die for good. Now it's your turn. Get your board headed straight for shore.”

Easier said than done, but after falling off two more times I had the headland staring straight at me.

“Lie down with the nose of the board just slightly out of the water.”

I was breathing hard. And I was shaking.

“Good. Now here comes a set. Let the first three pass under you.”

I felt the swells move under me, but I stayed put.

“Now for this next one, paddle like your life depends on it.”

So I paddled as hard as I could and I was shocked. The wave suddenly grew steep, real steep. I had actually caught the wave, but my board was rocketing straight for the bottom. I realized that I'd been here before. Then wham.

I did a full frontal face-plant in the trough of the wave and lost the board. Water was forced up my nostrils, and in a split second I was under water, getting pummeled like a mouse in a washing machine.

Then it was over. I'd swallowed some water, but I popped up. The wave had passed and my board floated nearby. Another wave was coming at me. “Get away from your board,” Ray yelled. “Dive.”

So I dove and I felt the last wave of the set rumble over top of me. When I surfaced, the board was still nearby. And I was still alive.

Ray kept an eye on me as I struggled to paddle back to the lineup after each attempt to catch a wave. I racked up ten wipeouts.

“You're doing just fine. You can catch the waves. All you have to do is keep the nose from pearling.”

“Pearling?”

“Digging in. Lean back once you've caught the wave.”

On the next wave, I leaned back and, well, I wiped out, but not right away. I actually
dropped down the face, and then I skidded out in front of the wave. I was so excited I tried to stand up. That's when I slipped off the board and got walloped by the wall of water behind me. I came up spitting sea juice. But I was smiling.

I never did stand up that day. And I was waterlogged. But it felt good.

Ray suddenly looked tired. “Ready to go ashore?” he asked.

“Yeah. I'm stoked but wasted.”

“It's a good combination.”

I looked up at the headland just then and there was a girl sitting with Mickey D. I squinted into the sun to get a good look. It was Tara. And she saw me looking. I waved to her, but she didn't wave back. Instead, she stood up and clapped her hands as if she had just watched a performance of some kind—my performance.

Mickey D met us on the beach, wagging his tail but having a hard time walking on the slippery rocks. Tara was nowhere in sight. Ray had to sit down before we walked the long hike back to his van. “I'm out of shape, dude.
Too much driving. Too much time cramped up in the van.” Ray looked a little pale just then.

“You all right?”

“All right is relative, Ben. I'm not as good as I used to be. But I'm not dead yet.” He laughed and coughed so hard I was afraid he'd hurt himself.

“Wanna stay at my house for a bit? You'd get to sleep in a bed.”

“I'm not a mooch. I don't think I'd be comfortable at your ole homestead. Rather be in the van. Stay close to the water.”

“You want to be close to the water?”

“Yeah. I need to be able to wake up, look out the window and see the ocean.”

“I got an idea,” I said.

After we wrestled ourselves out of the wet suits, I told Ray I wanted to take him on a sightseeing tour.

“Food first,” he said, and he set out a loaf of whole wheat bread, a jar of peanut butter and one of homemade jelly. Ray made a big sandwich for me, one for Mickey D and one for himself. There was so much peanut butter
in it that the whole thing stuck to the roof of my mouth and I could hardly swallow. Mickey D wolfed his down in four bites. So did Ray. “Where to?” Ray asked, picking up his keys.

We drove out to the fishermen's shacks at the end of Osprey Island Road, and I told him to stop in front of an old weathered three-room structure by the harbor there. “It was my grandfather's,” I said. “He didn't live here, but he stayed here overnight if he was going out to sea in the morning.”

I led Ray first out onto the rickety wooden wharf that was attached. He was wide-eyed as he looked into the deep clear water. “Your granddad was a fisherman?”

“Up until the time the fish were gone.”

“Damn.”

“Come on in.” I found the key under an old fish crate by the window and opened the door. “You can stay here if you like. No one's been using the place since he died.” I felt like crying. Ray could see it in my face.

“I love it,” Ray said, looking out the window at the sparkling water just a few feet
from the shack. “I'd like to call it home for a while.” Then he turned to the dog. “What do you think, Mickey? Okay if we crash here for a while?”

Mickey just wagged his tail. Then he went outside, lifted his leg and peed on an upright post. “Mickey D says thanks. Me too.”

Ray loaned me a nine-foot tri-fin board and told me to keep the wet suit. He dropped me off at home and I felt like a king. Now I had my own surf gear. I could surf whenever I wanted. Suddenly summer didn't look so bad.

Ray would show up and we'd go back to the Farm—Nirvana Farm—where I started to get the hang of catching waves, riding on my belly and then finally on my knees.

But the breakthrough happened about a week later. I was all alone at the beach. The fog was back, thick as pea soup. It was seven o'clock in the morning and I had skipped breakfast. I rode my bike to the beach, wearing my wet suit and towing my board behind me on a handmade one-wheeled trailer I'd built. I heard the waves before I saw them. It was like cannons going off. I knew I shouldn't be out there alone but I had a fire in me. Today was it.

As I paddled out to the place we called the Reef (because of a rocky reef a hundred yards from shore), I felt both scared and thrilled. It was so foggy I couldn't even see the waves until they were on top of me. I had to paddle straight through five head-high walls of glass until I was beyond the break line. Then I turned around and sat on my board.

You couldn't see the shore from here. You couldn't see the waves coming. But I could feel a set approaching. I remembered Ray's advice. Don't go for the first three waves in the set. I let them pass under me. Then I lay
down and took four deep hard strokes into the cold dark water.

The wave was getting steeper. I began to drop. I pushed up and got to my feet just as I hit the bottom of the wave. I stood up and leaned left, digging in with my back foot until the board began to turn. I was riding high and fast on this amazing wall of water through an invisible world. I could hear the wave breaking right behind me. I adjusted my footing, inched forward on the board and started going even faster.

Suddenly, something snapped inside me. I felt calm, unafraid. Time stopped. I let out a loud yelp that could have been heard a mile down the coast. I leaned back a little, readjusting my weight, feeling the power of the wave and tapping into it.

The wave sectioned. It began to break ahead of me as well as behind me. I tucked down and grabbed the rail of my board as I drove straight into a four-foot hollow pocket that was in my path. Suddenly I was tubed, and it was glorious. But in the split second after I was gobbled up, sucked to the top of the
wave and bashed back down over the falls, my board caught sideways between my legs.

It hurt a little. Well, it hurt a lot. When a gremmie gets overconfident, it is the job of the mother sea to put him in his place. I was rolled, spindled and mutilated, but I came up gulping for air and feeling like I was fully alive.

I was a surfer now and there was no turning back.

Ray settled in at the fish shack. He'd still drive down to the beach most days just to shoot the breeze with whoever would give him the time of day. Some days, even when the waves were good, he didn't surf. Despite all the sun he was getting, he looked a little pale.

I was in the water every day now. I didn't care if the waves were clean or mushy, choppy or smooth. I just wanted to be in the water. If I got to the beach early enough, I had it to
myself, but by the middle of July, city surfers were on dawn patrol and it was getting harder to get a wave to myself.