De Luz

My few remaining days in Panama have been filled with as much surf-time as my aching body will allow. I’ve surfed my biggest — but not necessarily best — couple of waves , having made the drop the wave’s were curling above and ahead of me well overhead. I’m never very good at judging wave heights, they always seem bigger to me than they probably are, but these were definitely 10ft+ faces and very nearly barreling (curling right over the surfer enclosing them within a tube of water). I took one smaller wave which curled began to curl over me and instinctively I ducked under the lip of the wave as it pitched out over me but it hit my head an knocked me head over heels. Next time eh?...

Spending so much time in the sea this last week I’ve observed some really spectacular light phenomenon. The brooding, stormy Caribbean weather has often been overcast but bright, and no wind the polished surface of the sea reflects the grey of the sky through it’s aqua lense creating a silvery green shimmer which makes it very difficult to distinguish between sea and sky, above and below air and liquid merging. One of the stormier days produced a light show that took me a few moments to comprehend it’s existence outside of the Photoshop realm. Off the northern tip of Isla Bastimentos on the waters horizon was what I can only describe as a setting rainbow, but rather than a ring-like rainbow this was a solid circular spectrum of light dipping below the skyline.

Another feature of surfing so much is the thinking time it affords between sets, in which time I’ve come up with a universal analogy between relationships and surfing. Both begin with a leap of faith, conviction, effort and determination to catch a ride on an inexorable wave of energy. Once aboard momentum takes over as an exhilarating freefall occurs but if you’re passive at this point then the freefall runs it’s course and it fizzles and dies or you tumble and crash. Once the initial buzz is under way you need to work to read and ride that energy to keep momentum going to stay ahead of the crumbling breaking wave, you need to use experience and intuition to understand and react to that energy, to flow with that energy and you have to keep opening up to the energy , to let yourself go in order to keep riding it for as long as possible.
Oh – here comes another wave…