I was surfing in Chile, and that’s when it hit me.
I was surfing in Chile today. Sitting on a rented board just off the famous rocky point break Punta de Lobos, looking out at the endless Pacific horizon. And that’s when it hit me.
A massive, frothy, slow breaking wave crashed directly over my head and despite my futile attempt to turtle dive through it, that thing hit me like a bag of bricks.
I live in a landlocked province in Canada, so I don’t get to surf that often. I love it and seek it out whenever I can, but I am a very average surfer at best. I’ve been out on breaks that are well past my skill level before and am always just as happy to sit in the line up and watch the pros and learn and feel the rythm of the sea beneath me, the hard sun above me and ponder the endless horizon while I wait for my wave. I’m pretty good at paddling out of the way of anything I can’t handle. But this one caught me off guard. It tossed me around and kept me under for a while and when it spat me out I saw another one coming in fast. When I tried to turtle again (hold the board upside down over my head so the wave could pass over without pulling me along) my leg siezed up hard. I mean, what did I expect after biking 450km over mountains for the past 5 days, not stretching, and then jumping gung-ho into the freezing Pacific. Despite my obvious stupidity, the pain of the cramp still shocked me and I let out a sharp exhale — right as wave #2 came down. This one pulled me deep and my lungs, with no air in them, were on fire. When I finally came up, I paddled the long stretch of rocky shore to the safety of the beach, wild-eyed and full of salt water.
The wave wasn’t the only thing that hit me in that moment, though. The whole thing – life – came into sharp relief out on the water. Here I am, surfing in Chile. I got here by biking over the mountains I can see in the distance, on a bike I bought with the money I earned from putting trees in the ground after graduating school and… This is really it. I am on this adventure, making it happen. My legs are on fire, my clothes smell terrible and my lips are splitting from sun and wind. Something about surfing today and getting tossed around by that wave made it all feel very real.
We dream of grand adventures when we sit still. Then when they are happening they don’t always feel all that grand. Then we look back on them very fondly and tell grand tales of them to our friends. Flying down to Santiago was a sleepy blurr. Since then the whole thing has almost felt like a dream. But this wave today was a head-splitting alarm ringing to the tune of “Wake up! This is it! This is as real as it gets!”.
In the last week we have covered so much ground — from desert to forest to rolling pastures. We’ve camped and stayed in strangers’ homes and been utterly stunned by the kindness shown to us on the road (shoutout to Casa Cyclista San Antonio). My rack broke on the first day, our collective spanish vocabulary is still frusturatingly narrow and I nearly threw my bike off a cliff after getting my third flat in 20 minutes at the end of a long day. All of that and more in just one week!
Time is slowing down and so much is happening. Thanks to that wave I’m going to make sure I’m fully present for every single leg-burning, wind-howling, finger-numbing, rain-pissing, sun-beating second of it.
Nick
