I used to hate sand. As a kid, I’d neurotically kick and scream to get it off my feet during drives home from the beach. It was messy and scratchy and got all over everything, especially inside my Flojos…a real nuisance. I was the rare breed of child who hated clutter and mess and sand was public enemy number one. It actually deterred me from enjoying the beach during the time my memory kicks in so I actually remember hating the beach for a time. But it wasn’t long before I realized the only place I was able to keep sand at bay was in the water, which kicked off a beautiful and complicated lifelong relationship between me and the sea.

The next step in my ocean evolution is having a guide. A lot can go wrong before anything goes right in the ocean and it's imperative to have a guide. There are a lot of people who won't touch the place, and I’d say it’s due to a lack of an early-in-life tutor. It’s scary, unpredictable and massive — all the most terrifying things when you’re young. Lucky for me, I had my dad. My dad is a surfer and once I figured out what that meant, my relationship with sand forever changed. I’d watch my dad rub sand on the deck of his board before he paddled out and so it went from nuisance to critical tool.

From there I became filled with all the aromas and sensations of surfing. I’d play in the shorebreak and watch my dad paddle out the back into a mysterious world I could only ask about before he finally put me on his board and paddled me all the way out. We’d belly in on waves while relatives lined the shore to watch me “surf.” Then it was the acquisition of a board with pink rails and my own bars of wax and a fluorescent Aleeda wetsuit and life seemed pretty well set. I was a surfer.

I’m reminded of these early days because it’s a big weekend for such memories: Saturday is International Surfing Day — a “holiday” that I feel personally responsible for(for better or worse) because I was on Evan Slater’s edit staff when he and Ross Garrett “started it” — and Sunday is Father’s Day. So it feels to me like a celebration of what got me where I am today — sitting in my garage next to my surfboards and wetsuits writing a newsletter for a surf media company best described as being “for surfers who probably also listen to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.”

I'm also feeling a little sentimental because I’m now both a surfer and a dad — AKA: ocean guide for Agnes.

Last night was her first trip down to the beach this summer — and the first she’s been able to walk for. We made our way down the cliff, over the massive sand moguls and to the water’s edge where the shorebreak was big and not exactly warm. But the instant her feet touched the water and her eyeline filled with whitewater, she started laughing and smiling until we had to drag her back to the car. But not before her ocean guide showed her how to roll around in the sand because driving home from the beach all sandy is the best.—Travis Ferré

[Above photo: Results of telling my wife to make this sentimental photo look more “Bad Seeds” — she calls it an homage to Instagram in 2012.]