Vancouver Island, 1994

I've been to this place twice. The first time was during a family vacation in the 70s. I remembered it as cold, desolate, and stunningly beautiful. I remembered enormous driftwood - not just a piece of wood but the entire tree. I remembered abandoned lean-tos and other shelters made out of driftwood, by hippies, I reckoned.

And when I returned a little over 20 years later, it was exactly as I remember.

Malibu

Early March at Zuma Beach.


I was still using borrowed boards. Tony Alva loaned me this.


Tere with his mini-Simmons. This board always gets a lot of comments.

Zuma Beach, March 1 2009, 11:00am

Zuma March 21 2009

This week's beach update splits between two weekends. The idea here is to try to convey what this experience is like for me...which is not about a bunch of macho young man's stuff in which one tames a wave and conquers nature and engages in Xtreme anything...it's more about the fact that you cannot conquer nature, you cannot will the ocean to do anything, it's not listening to you and really doesn't even know you're there. it's about some sort of sense of one-ness with the whole thing. It's sort of easy to get that feeling of serene awe when you are sitting on a board in the ocean with the dolphins swimming not so far beyond you, storm clouds building over the mountains...

It's like the Buddhist mindfulness/Vipasanna meditation, which is a meditation not of blissed out, what's-up-with-my-naval escapism, but of focus, concentration on specific aspects of the immediate here-and-now.


My board, Zuma, March 14, 2009


Tere, Zuma, March 21, 2009

Zuma Beach, March 15, 8am

Zuma Beach, March 15, at about 8am


My board - a 6'10" funboard, made by a UK company named after the Welsh shaper, Zuma Beach, March 15, at about 8am

Zuma, March 2009

Zuma Beach, March 1, 8am

Sunday morning, 8am, Zuma Beach. Perhaps it was the time of day, perhaps the time of year...but I don't remember it ever looking more beautiful. Water flat and glassy past the break; coming down the canyon the ocean looked like a lake.


Zuma FOOD sign


Huntington Beach, Feb 2009

This Year's Theme

Every year has a theme, it seems. Last year's was obvious: the election, and with it, inner city blues. This year the theme is likely gonna be the beach.

The rains have finally let up, or at least took a break. Went down to Huntington Beach Saturday am to surf. This is a shot from two years ago, up at Zuma: