Church of Surf

June 4, 2006
New York Times Magazine

Wave Rider by Steven Kotler

My earliest childhood belief was a sneaking suspicion that the world was more mysterious than people were letting on. It's hard to say how much of this was suburban boredom and how much heartfelt sentiment, and in the end it didn't matter. By the time I got to college, that little notion had grown into a bad case of Jonathan Livingston Seagull-itis. When two semesters of philosophy failed to satisfy, I dropped out and moved to Santa Fe because the New Age was booming.

Santa Fe was the rabbit hole, all right. There were ashrams, monasteries, strange teas, stranger mushrooms, Sanskrit chants, Native American medicine men with headdresses made from whole otter skins, folks on the run from the law, folks on the run from much worse. I signed on for the whole tour; it lasted for years. By the time I returned, I could sit in full lotus for six hours at a time, but I never, not once, achieved a mystical anything.

During the next decade, I lost interest. I still hoped there was a place where exalted magics were possible but no longer lived in that part of the world. Since I didn't go in for the big-invisible-man-in-the-sky theory, there wasn't much left. Instead I went in the opposite direction, becoming a science geek, a fervent devotee in the high church of observable phenomena. And then, in my mid-30's, I got Lyme disease and whatever faith I had in the miracle of modern medicine — for me, the apogee of rational materialism — was lost, too.

My first year was spent with doctors who were convinced that I was faking my sickness, my second with doctors who were unable to cure it. By then I had lost 25 pounds. Truthfully, I was done. Long ago I decided that given the right set of impossible circumstances, calling it quits was always an option. There was a lot of melodrama that year: sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet, a couple of bottles of bourbon for added insurance, a trusty ballpoint for any sad-sack attempts at epic poetry.

It was around that time that I got a phone call from a friend who wanted me to go surfing. For certain, it was a ridiculous request — even if you ignore the Lyme fatigue that kept me in bed many days. My last wave-riding experience took place almost a decade earlier, in monstrous Indonesian swells, and that time I nearly drowned. But even before that, the sport was never much fun for me. I learned to surf in San Francisco, where the water is freezing and the waves are serious. Just paddling out often felt like a life-threatening experience. I remember days when I never made it to the lineup, never mind catching a ride. The few rides I did catch were often short, often mean, the currents often treacherous. Eventually I stopped trying.

But here was my friend, telling me the waves would do some good. And I suppose I was just too depressed to argue. What the hell, I thought, I could always kill myself tomorrow.

My friend took me to Sunset Beach; unlike its Hawaiian namesake, Southern California's version is a beginner's wave predominately peopled by geriatrics, the unskilled, the terrified. Most surfers learn there and never go back. The waves are soft and slow, and on the day we went, there was no swell in sight. The surf was barely two feet high, but the water was warm and the tide low, and despite my wobbliness I could just about wade to the lineup.

Thirty seconds later, a wave came. Because it was a junk day at a junk break, there were no other takers. I was rusty, but I spun my board around, paddled twice and was on it. Somehow I got to my feet and drove down into the wave. There was a gauzy line of foam forming on the crest as a cradle rock of acceleration sped me into the trough.
Surfing is not found among remedies — common or otherwise — for chronic immune conditions, and since I had rejected just about every mystical system known to man, I didn't think it was time to start believing in some aquatic hippie nonsense about communion with the water. All I know is that when that ride was over I wanted another and another and another. The ocean was offering me a taste, no more, but for the first time in two years, for that one wave-riding instant, I felt the thrum of life, the possibility of possibilities.

Five waves later I wasn't just exhausted, I was disassembled. Those five waves led to 15 days in bed, but on the 16th I drove back for more. I caught five more waves and spent another two weeks recovering. The ratio would stay bad for months, but there was no way around it: I started to feel better, and the world started to feel mysterious again.

Steven Kotler is the author of "West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief," to be published this month by Bloomsbury and from which this essay is adapted.