I love watching the backs of waves. That realization was slow in coming, conditioned as I have been by all the frontside, front-lit, top-heavy, looming beauties offered up in the surf magazines and films. And watching the wave from this perspective must mean I'd missed it, right, if I were surfing, and the only consolations would be watching my friends ride and the knowledge gained as to where and how the waves were breaking particularly. Though, I'd probably be turning to keep my eyes on the approaching breaker and missing much of that rear view.As a free diver and especially as an abalone diver up north, I've watched many waves breaking, calculating the time between sets, checking the force in play, setting up my exit amidst the rips and rocks. Mostly, I love watching the backs of waves for the simple fact that such a view means I'm out there.
And Out There is where I generally desire to be.
With the photo above, I'd like to direct your attention to the lovely view of the shore, to the foam-capped back of the breaking wave, to the black-suited surfer waiting for the next one, and to the humps and contours of the water just in front of me. That foreground and the dip just beyond . . . whoever thinks water is flat must be looking into a bucket at rest on the ground.
My favorite schoolyard experiment was always to fill a bucket with water and to swing it all the way around over and over again without spilling a drop. (For me--and I don't know if this was the lesson I was supposed to be learning--gravity was the bucket that kept the oceans from spilling off the surface of the earth.)
On the other hand, lots of spillage up above, and it's all good.
I like the hint of kelp in the foreground to the right too.
(Centrifugal force: that's the bucket lesson, right?)
P.S. I like how we are looking up at that breaking wave. You'd think we'd be looking down or across at it, since it's broken, really, and yet we are still looking up. That's how much water is moving shoreward, and I am being pulled down into the trough of the next wave as well.
