What Does it Mean to Surf?
My parents and I drove through hundreds of miles of drought stricken land to get to the Surf Ranch, a famous wave pool in the middle of California. I started to smell manure from the surrounding cattle farms as we pulled up to the logo-imprinted wooden gates. Silver airstream trailers lay past these gates, surrounding a pool that was thousands of feet long and only a few feet deep. A sand-colored tarp sat underneath the chlorinated water, and drones circled above it. A train-sized machine ran alongside the edge of the pool, powerful enough to form the water into perfect, uniform waves. These waves were manufactured to resemble the ocean’s waves, but they were so perfectly shaped and lasted so long that it would take a lifetime to find something like them in the ocean. In the middle of August in central California, there was no need for a wetsuit. I jumped in the water, and while I waited for my engineered wave, my heart was pounding. Cameras were on me from every direction. Though the environment felt high-pressure, it was almost impossible not to have fun. The Surf Ranch is known for being like Disneyland for surfers. The quick repetition of perfect waves is designed to accelerate the learning experience, meaning that people who have never surfed before can stand up within their first few tries and people with surfing experience can improve quickly. After a day on those waves, I was exhausted and fell asleep as soon as we started our drive back to the coast.
The next morning I woke up to the sound of the ocean and made plans to surf that day. I struggled to put on my sandy wetsuit, which allows me to linger long enough in the cold, salty water to catch a few good waves. Unlike the scheduled, uniform waves at the Surf Ranch, the ocean’s waves are unexpected. They come in sets, but the sets come with almost no predictability and can be ruined by a shift in the wind, so I bob in the water waiting and watching for the right wave. Over the years, while I have waited for waves, I have watched great white shark fins glide past, I have seen baby dolphins leap playfully by their mother’s side, and stingrays have brushed up against my legs. In my rubber wetsuit, I recognize that I am an intruder and have very little control here. This lack of control makes me feel more connected to nature, as I become part of and subject to its forces. I am alert and present because I know that I have to pay attention to everything around me. Even though I am in the cold water for hours, when I emerge I feel rejuvenated.
The Surf Ranch helped me understand that surfing is not simply the act of riding a wave, it is getting into the ocean and making myself vulnerable to the power of nature. The wave pool uses energy to manufacture a perfect wave, but it doesn’t come close to replicating the whole experience of surfing. For learning, improving, and competing, the wave pool is an incredible tool. It becomes dangerous though when wave pools are no longer being used as a tool but rather as a replacement for an experience that currently connects millions of people to the ocean and makes them appreciate it. The Surf Ranch is licensing their technology, and wave pools are already being built around the world. Companies are even developing communities around these wave pools. We as humans tend to take what we like about nature and fabricate hollowed out versions of it, and ironically this practice ends up separating us from the very nature we are emulating.
