William Finnegan: Learning Curves

Here's a paragraph from Finnegan's excellent memoir Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life:

The ocean itself was another story.  I waded into the waves at Will Rogers, diving under pummeling lines of foam, thrashing toward the main sandbar, where the brown walls of the big waves stood and broke.  I couldn't get enough of their rhythmic violence.  They pulled you toward them like hungry giants.  They drained the water off the bar as they drew to their full, awful height, then pitched forward and exploded.  From underwater, the concussion was deeply satisfying.  Waves were better than anything in books, better than movies, better even than a ride at Disneyland, because with them the charge of danger was uncontrived.  It was real.  And you could learn how to maneuver around it, how long to wait on the bottom, how to swim outside, beyond the break, and, eventually how to bodysurf.  I learned actual bodysurfing technique in Newport, watching and imitating Becket and his friends, but I got comfortable in waves at Will Rogers.

--Barbarian Days -- page 71

Penguin Press, New York: 2015