As you have seen, we had a great time in Europe. In so many ways, I loved that it felt like everything was accessible to me, a person of limited fitness and zero outdoor skills. To get whisked to the top of a mountain – magical! Of course, when you get there, there are a thousand other people there too. But gondolas, cable cars, and railways were the only way I would ever get to the top of the cliffs of Mannlichen, or the Jungfrau, or the Niederhorn, and I was so grateful for those experiences.
Still, even appreciating all of that, there was something tamed about the fact that every surface, no matter how rugged, had been examined, evaluated, and, if deemed worthy, been constructed upon. It was all there for me…but aren’t there some things that shouldn’t be for me? That shouldn’t be crisscrossed with rails and cables and turned into a tourist’s 2-hour trip instead of the payoff of a lifetime of effort? That should be beyond the reach of most humans most of the time? I loved it, but it also left me thirsting a bit for the wilds of Oregon – those are increasingly tamed too, but there are parts of the Pacific Northwest that are available to a human being only if they truly want it. I left Europe thirsty for wilderness.
So not too long after we got back, we made a trip to the Oregon coast. Ha, in a comfortable car, with a hotel right on the beach – we were really roughing it. But after trips to the polite and placid Atlantic and Mediterranean, it was exhilarating and actually a little scary to see the outrageous turmoil of the Pacific Ocean waves. They demand your attention and give you an enormous show. I know I kind of chided the Oregon ocean for not being more swimmable, but for pure pyrotechnics, the Oregon coast is where it’s at.
I like to stand on the beach and stare at the waves. Poor Daniel, he’s waiting for us to do something, and I’m just standing there staring. On this October day, the seas were churning and heaving, and absolutely breathtaking after the placid seas of Europe. We watched with great interest as a woman in a tiny sea kayak embarked on the slow process of getting out into the waves. I assumed that she needed to get past the active surf at the shore and out into the calm waters beyond, where she would enjoy the open ocean in her short little watercraft.
She got waterborne, then sailed up one enormous wave after another. It would toss her back down, and she would engage these crazy maneuvers to spin around and get righted, only to cruise up the next wave and crash back down. Again and again, the waves threw her up and down. I watched with my heart in my throat, as she struggled in vain to get past the waves. After 20 minutes of mighty effort, she’d made no progress at all. What was it going to take to get beyond the surf?
I commented on her lack of progress, and Daniel said, “She’s not trying to get past it, she’s moving parallel to the shore.” Yes…yes she was. She was deliberately staying in the waves, fighting the hardest part of being in the ocean, for reasons that I didn’t anticipate, and won’t ever know. She wasn’t going through; she was right where she intended to be.
I had completely misunderstood the whole point. I thought I understood the purpose, but I didn’t.
It occurred to me that I could learn something from this as I reenter normal life after this Europe trip. I’d been tossed around emotionally a little bit, going from all-day-every-day dopamine high to the doldrums of everyday life and everyday problems. But this wasn’t just Stef’s October 2023 problem, this has been…life. I think we spend a lot of our lives thinking that the point is to fight up and down the waves until we are beyond the waves. To thrash at the waves with our paddles and tiny kayaks until we’re out past the waves and into the relative calm of the ocean. When we get there, we’ll finally have accomplished it. Then we can rest. Past the waves.
But our kayaker wasn’t just living in a world where the waves never stopped. She was there for the waves. She could have gone out past, but that wasn’t her goal. It was her intention to battle up this wave, then this wave, then this one. Every one made her stronger, and she wanted that.
And I think that on this day of big surf, she was actually eager to get out there, the perfect day to hone her craft. And what if she wanted the scariest of those big waves? What if she saw the biggest ones roaring toward her, and welcomed it? I picture the moment she saw that One Wave rising, the biggest one she’s ever seen, and as it loomed over her, she had a little lump of fear in her gut, but she also thought, “I’ve trained for you. I am ready.” And it crashes down, and she pops out of the bottom, and heads into the next wave. Because that was the point.
So what do I make of a life that is not an endless vacation in Europe? As if ordinary mortals get such a life. We get into our small, nimble kayaks and resolve to work in the waves, to get better at riding the waves with every swell. In our most effective moments, we don’t work endlessly toward a time when there are no more waves – it’s not about getting to the weekend, the next vacation, or to getting the kids grown and moved out, or to retirement. Most of you know I’ve misspent a lot of my life trying to avoid the hard stuff. It turns out the hard stuff is the point. And you don’t have to be afraid of the wave, even as it towers over you. You’ve surfed it before.
You appreciate these things on a different level than I do… I was fixated on her kayaking gear and how it would work better or worse than a surfboard, which was the most similar activity I could think of. But everything you said here is true. That woman was not like all of the other things on beach. Not like the container ships on the horizon looking forward to their next port, not like the birds focusing on finding their next bite of food in the sand, not like the walkers mulling over their worries or their dogs dashing toward whatever grabs their attention, and not like me trying to analyze this kayaker’s gear. That kayaker was doing something rare. She actually engaged with each and every wave.
I think you engage with the literal waves at beach more than many people do, just by paying attention to them. And, metaphorically, you do put yourself out there in the surf of life, which is sometimes your relationship with me or your mom and sometimes is work and sometimes is your own mind and sometimes is our place in the cosmos. Like the kayaker, this is something special and rare.
Great piece. Man, though, I was so oblivious to everything you were thinking about… I was just planning what I’d order for fish and chips that afternoon 😉