You start walking out into the water, the first 20 feet are just deep enough to submerge your ankles and you think to yourself that the water doesn’t feel so bad. Kept at bay by the offshore wind and storm surge, the cold stays in its dark depths waiting for its own opportunity to test those who venture in.
As you wade out ever deeper, you get your first feel of the power behind the waves that are relentlessly pressing into the shore. As you get to waist deep water, the power of the ocean and swells begins to push and pull you, bending you ever so slightly to its own will. You begin to realize that you’re not the one in control here.
As you wade deeper, you start preparing.
You’re watching the waves come in one after another, what seems to be a continuous onslaught of white water, but there are lulls, you begin to see the repetitive pattern and wait.
You see the opening, take a deep breath and dive in.
Muscle memory immediately takes over, right, left, right, breathe…right, left, right, breathe. You look up and see the first wave coming at you like a roaring freight train and just as it’s about to hit, you dive down and avoid getting a wall of white in the face and ragdolled in the mess. Everything is dark for a split second as it passes above you and you feel the tug backwards on your waist as the buoy gets consumed by the raging wall of white. You pop up, take a breath and immediately start the arms up again, making up the ground that you've just lost and inching forward…next wave.
You repeat this again and again, the waves don’t stop, they don’t slow down and in all reality, the farther out you go, the more intimidating they grow, the louder they grow, and the you realize just how little control you have in the situation. You continually dive under the waves, pop up and swim, your lungs are burning, you heart is pounding, you want more air, more time, more of something other than the walls of water. There's no reprieve, no extra time, no timeouts...not without sacrificing all the work it took to get where you are…the only direction is forward. The water is towering 6’ above you now, every wave is a last second decision to dive under or try going over it, risking getting uncontrolably thrown backwards. You look backand it now looks just as daunting as moving forward.
How much farther before they stop crashing?
It’s nearly impossible to decipher where in the mess you are right now, how far you’ve gone and how far left you have to go before the waves are no longer crashing on you.
You put your head down and give it another burst of swimming while barely breathing, you finally start going over more waves than you’re going under and suddenly you’re there. You’re past the break. You take a quick rest, grab a couple extra breaths and get yourself far enough so you’re not pushed back in.
There’s a certain chaos that comes with swimming, and photography, in the surf. There's a lot of similarities between the waves, the ocean, the unpredictability, and life. A reminder that we're never really in control, we're along for the ride and while some days are much easier than others, it's all a part of the same ride.
