Low Roar

I’ve spent the last few months in the trenches of the surf world. I’ve discussed the intricacies of our often flawed, sterilized and beautiful (yet somehow more exciting than ever) lifestyle ad nauseam. On here. On podcasts. On our site. On the beach. On the phone. On “calls.” Over coffee. Anywhere you can talk, I talked. About surfing. And for good reason. There’s been a lot to discuss.

Some legendary surf brands officially filed for bankruptcy last month (again), reshuffling the industry deck and potentially putting the underdogs in the driver seat for the foreseeable future. Natural Selection Surf entered the chat with a fresh take on competition, judging and surf travel, emphasizing Mother Nature’s influence while the WSL debuted the first event from Abu Dhabi in a wavepool. Pipeline hasn’t stopped firing for weeks. The Eddie ran. John John and Medina are off the tour. Al Cleland Jr. is on tour. And the girls continue to raise the bar every time they paddle out. But somehow, amid all that noise, there was a quiet moment that was by far the loudest.

After several weeks of deadline stress and conversing endlessly, viewing and theorizing about surfing, I finally found myself at the actual beach during a solid run of swell. It was a beautiful, sunny, glassy day in February and I was with my wife and daughter. My family. 

Now, I get twitchy when the waves are good and I’m around it. I can’t sit on the beach or really do much of anything if it even so much as “looks fun.” So I was shocked that even after all the missed water time and froth that had developed, what patience I had on this sunny, pumping day at home. I wasn’t even the most excited person in the car. Something was more awesome than my own surfing for once.

Inside the car my daughter was getting her first glimpse of the ocean and sand, realizing she was at the beach. 

“Beeeeech!”

She instantly started trying to get her 1-year old arm into the sleeve of a wetsuit that’s way too big for her. She couldn’t help it. She was psyched. Her enthusiasm became mine. It was the first time that had happened. I’d been stoked for friends getting good waves and for other people experiencing the ocean for the first time before, but this was something new. Never felt anything like it. I had no more feeling for riding waves. I just wanted to see her see the sea.

The rest of that day was devoted to the subtle intricacies that we might take for granted sprinting down to surf. We saw the minutia that makes up the sand. The mysterious plastic nerdles. The Crabs. Birds. Shells. A sandbar that developed right before our eyes thanks to the ebbing tide and provided a daddy/daughter teaching moment. We enjoyed every lapping wave that hit us. Miracles of the mundane. Hidden in the noise of it all.

Once her teeth began to chatter, I finally suited up and paddled out while she warmed up. It was definitely pumping and I definitely got a couple good waves. But it was the first time surfing where I spent more time looking back at the land than I did at the horizon. I couldn’t wait to go in. The gift of the ocean to my daughter is now more rad to me than the ocean itself.  Probably a sign that I’m getting old and realize that the louder the world around me gets the more I only want to listen to the quietest things.—Travis Ferré

[Above art: Summer by Agnes Martin, 1965]