“You’re a surfer, right?” one of my thirty-three Norwegian exchange students asks me between environmental studies lectures.
“I mean, like, a real surfer?” she clarifies, brushing a few strands of very blonde hair from her well-collagenated forehead.
It’s 10am. My hair, by contrast, is still damp and slightly salty from the early bird sesh I snuck in before class, after which I changed in the parking lot, beneath my mermaid-print sarong, into what passes for business-casual professor attire. My surfboard sits in its jungle-worn travel bag outside the classroom, so it won’t overheat in the Tacoma.
Though all signs point to ‘yes’, I never quite know how to answer that question.
A real surfer.
That’s a bold claim in modern surf culture. I recall conversations with the men in my life and the ways they were always quick to pass judgement on the other dudes who didn’t paddle out on the biggest swell days.
“Who’s a real surfer now?” they’d joke between heavy sets. Heart pounding with adrenaline behind thin layers of sun-freckled skin and stretchy bikini fabric, I took their proverbial fist-bump as a sign that I’d proven myself; that I can hang with the big boys out there.
Caring about any of that feels like a long time ago.
“I love surfing,” I attempt an answer. “It’s a big part of my life.”
“Cool,” she says, grabbing her wallet for a coffee.
Cool. Another hot topic in our watery world. I’ll save her the commentary.
Now I’m scrolling through the archives of my surfing life. Twenty years of photos and memories strewn across distant coastlines in dozens of countries on six continents. Bucket list adventures with ex-boyfriends, pushing the boundaries of possibility. Girls’ trips to tropical surfscapes with souvenir secrets we’ll never spill. Solitary sojourns chasing surfy dreams far off the beaten path. Half a life lived no further than a few minutes’ drive from my favorite waves. An entire existence built at the whims of the moon’s gravitational pull on the tides, swell seasons and subtle energies moving across the sea floor; bathymetrical geographies, foam-and-fiberglass geometries.
Twenty years ago, I bought a secondhand blue-and-purple 7’4 funboard and promised myself I’d brave the ocean every day until I figured out what this whole surfing thing was all about. Who knew then that I’d be planning my days around surf forecasts and wind directions for the better part of two decades? My obsession with the sea, with the power of the waves, has proven unwavering. Six weeks in a row is perhaps the longest I’ve gone without her; by far the most consistent long-term relationship I’ve been capable of maintaining with any entity beyond my immediate family.
Does it get more real than that?
Jungian philosophy holds that age 40 marks a landmark turning point in our lives, where ego takes a backseat to legacy; where we start caring less about what people think of us, and more about what we’ll leave behind when we’re gone.
Before I knew that was a thing, I’d been feeling it in my relationship with surfing for a few years now. Becoming more interested in growing roots near my favorite waves rather than chasing swell in every direction. Finishing my PhD and starting a research career in regenerative community surf tourism. Connecting with local conservation organizations and teaching study abroad programs in my field. Curating retreat experiences for women to support their processes of personal growth and our collective evolution.
Prioritizing dog, family, work, health, future - a little more responsibly. And focusing my energy toward a broader vision of surfscape conservation in the place I call home.
As an outcome of this age-inspired, legacy-oriented redirection, both intentional and circumstantial, some things about my surfing life have also changed – as they should, I suppose.
Nearing my 41st birthday later this month, I find myself no longer chasing the biggest waves I can handle, rarely craving the desire to feel the fear and do it anyway. As the need to prove myself as a real surfer fades into the shore break, I’ve embraced a softer surfer girl era, finally coming of age.
Potato-chip performance thrusters have been replaced with twin pins and 2 +1 grovelers for a bit more volume, a little less rocker. I’ve traded barreling beach break for pointbreak paradise with no regret in my rearview. It’s style, art, and connection over pushing adrenaline-filled limits. It’s less an individualistic pursuit of bucket list experiences and more tied into the place-based lifestyle of belonging to a local surfing community and its surrounding ecosystem.
How beautiful can I make this wave feel? An unexpected ethos guiding my own surfing revolution.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still surfing as much as humanly possible. I still froth like a grom when a big swell pops up on the forecast. I’m still out there most days taking up space and embodying my place as a woman in the water. The fishermen still blow me kisses from the boat when I brave a wave hello. And the señoras on the benches at the parking lot still look at me like I’m crazy when I come in wet in my bikini, their expression a mix of curiosity and disdain.
“Don’t you know there are crocodiles out there?” they ask me today.
Three very significant things have happened this year, beginning soon after my 40th birthday and all centering on the theme of mortality - as real as it gets in any surfer’s life, as far as I’m concerned. The first was a near drowning experience at my home break on a medium-sized day when I lost my board, ended up in an unforgiving current near the rocks, and a friend eventually rescued me. The second was adjusting to lifestyle changes after learning I’m in the high-risk category for congenital heart disease. And the third and most recent, the loss of my dear friend, co-author, boss, and mentor of 18 years who passed away in late July.
Confronting mortality across multiple material realities – in the liminal space of the ocean where I usually feel most at home, in the proximate experience of my own body, and in the intimacy of one of my closest relationships – has felt like a reckoning with time as a finite arbiter of purpose and meaning. Perhaps approximating what Carl Jung refers to as individuation; the shift from ego to legacy, the process of becoming one’s true self.
Near drowning and rescue have a way of humbling a girl into submission to the immanent reality that I’m no longer 25, and my threshold for survival and suffering has changed. I want more juice for less squeeze. And I want the motivation for my days to be steeped in knowing that my steps in the sand have left useful footprints along the shores I’ve been blessed to call home.
And if we take Jung’s philosophy to the heart of the sea, maybe surfing life before 40 is about finding what you love and creating value through becoming the person you dream of being. And as I sit here, drifting across the lineup of this liminal threshold that is growing up, maybe what I’m learning is that surfing life after 40 is about knowing what you’re willing to die for, and paddling like hell for the waves that take you closer to the legacy you’re destined to leave behind.
Are you a real a surfer? Sure. I guess. Probably depends who you ask.
But I wonder if that’s even the right question. Or what we might learn by asking something different.
Are you still surfing? What does your relationship with the ocean look like today? How has it changed? What sort of waves are you navigating through this phase of your surfing life? How are you choosing to surf them?
Because maybe, somewhere between ego and legacy, the right answers sit, adrift, on the other side of all the questions no one’s ever thought to ask.
A wave is alive in so far as it has energy coursing through its liquid medium of ocean brine.
And we are energy and consciousness, surfing through seas of materiality, with a sunsetting dream of eternal presence beyond the confines of time.
Written by Tara Ruttenberg