Dark Place

I know a dark place.  Dark and deep, beneath the sea.  I place I visited once, unvoluntarily held hostage there actually.  A place I don't ever want to revisit; a place that changed my entire outlook on my place in this universe.  The lesson I learned in my brief captivity, there in the dark deep, is: I. Don't. Matter.

It was a wave I suppose.  But more than the single wave that nearly ended me, my lingering haunt, is more with the place where that wave broke, where countless waves have broken, both before and after my time.

Fox Hill Point.  Unlike it's sister spot across the bay, Rye-on-the-Rocks, (often misnomed by local surfers as a point but in reality a rock reef,) Fox Hill, is a true point-break. A spot where swells first encounter a headland, then wrap long lines into a bay.  On really good days rides can approach 300 yards.  It breaks with power and force and it heaves and plunges on the outside take-off, then barrels and grinds over submerged rocks and boulders.  And unlike the mostly beach break spots that predominate the East Coast, Fox Hill can hold a really big swell, the biggest it can get around here. 

The day I almost drowned there, was the biggest, baddest swell I have ever surfed in New England.  The year was 1988.  The month was February.  About the coldest, gnarliest month of the year in these parts.  The water has usually bottomed out in the low thirties by February and when the nor'easters that generate winter swells would spiral off into the North Atlantic, frigid, howling northwesterlies would banshee in off the Canadian tundra.  When most of New England would be shoveling their driveways, or inside drinking hot cocoa, surfers (not a lot of them in those days) would be spastically contorted in their vehicles, frantically tugging into their wetsuits, engines running, heaters maxed and thermos mugs of hot liquids, gulped before the go-out. 

Surfers have traditionally embellished the small sized waves they surf, always saying it's bigger than it really was; three feet when it's barely thigh-high, or perhaps, "chest-high"...when measured to the chest of a ten year old.  But oddly, they conversely downplay the size of big waves they surf.  Go to Hawaii, and what you or I might look at and say is obviously twenty feet (the stacked height of two basketball nets) they would scoff at as being only 8-10 feet; basic rule of thumb being to halve (and then some,) the true size.  "Ya don't measure da wave by da front, brah, you gotta measure da back."  Silliness.  Somehow it seems more macho to diminish the wave's height if it is truly big. All I know is, I don't surf the back, but the front, or "face" of the wave.  And on this particular day at Fox Hill Point in New Hampshire, the faces were a solid basketball, hoop-and-a-half high; you do the math.  

I was in my surfing prime.  Peak condition both physically and with my surfing skills; I'd been surfing for 14 years.  I thought I knew it all, had experienced everything the East Coast surfer could experience.  I was about to be schooled...harshly.

I should have known better.  I didn't see anybody paddling out on shortboards or longboards that day.  Everyone was "gunned" up with 7'2"s, 7'6"s, and even 7'8"s.  It wasn't merely the size of the sets coming in, but the screaming offshore wind.  The biggest board I owned, my "big-wave" board was a 6'8," but I'd stupidly left it at home, not anticipating the magnitude of this swell.  This was in the days before buoy and internet reports and webcams.  Before cell phones even.  If you wanted an accurate surf check, you drove to the beach and checked it.  I'd seen the big red "L" (indicating a low-pressure system)on Joe Cupo's weather report the previous evening, but I never expected it to be anymore than maybe a foot or two overhead.  Driving by my local spot though, I found it was big, big, big...closed out whitewater way, way outside the usual lineup.  I should have turned the car right around and gone home to retrieve my 6'8;" better yet, I should have drove home and stayed there. I stupidly told myself I was gonna rip it up on my standard 6'2."

When I pulled up at the Fox Hill overlook I could see a handful of surfers already out.  I waited to watch a set; was stoked beyond measure when one rolled in.  Not only was it way, way overhead, but it was clean and perfect!  It surprised me though that most of the guys seemed to just be catching waves, setting their lines, and racing across the huge walls.  "They're only riding, not surfing the waves," I told myself.  I was gonna surf.  What I'd yet to fully learn and appreciate was that when waves increase in height, they also magnify in power. Exponentially. The other surfers were riding big boards mostly just so they could catch the waves.  They were rolling in fast and the stiff offshores blowing up the faces made them very difficult to gain the momentum to launch.

Woefully undergunned...woefully, woefully undergunned...I struggled for a good hour trying to get myself into a wave.  Everytime I stood up, thinking I had it, the wind kept pushing under my board, and blowing me back over the top behind it.  I was frustrated.  I kept watching the waves thundering down, just inside of me...from the back of the wave.  And I kept watching other surfers get incredible rides.  That whole day I never saw more than maybe 10 or 12 of them out in the lineup, and every one of them seemed to know what they were doing.  I'd surfed plenty of overhead days and I knew how to surf, but I didn't know diddly about big waves.  Whole 'nuther league when it gets to double overhead and beyond.  I wanted to cry...then I just got mad.  Really, really mad.

"Next set, no matter what, I'm catching one!" I inwardly screamed. 

Careful what you wish for in this life.  Spray blinding me, chin down, I pulled, and scratched and clawed my way over the crest, hopped up when I knew I had it, and then, felt the wind under my board...shit!  Only this time, instead of blowing over the back, the wind held me up, suspended for a few horrifying seconds in the lip as it began to throw...I had time to think: "Oh shit. Ohhhh shiiitt!" just as I free-fell into the biggest wave of my life. 

Surfers call it: "Going-over-the-falls," because the sensation is akin to those nuts who sometimes hurl over Niagra in wooden or metal barrels.  I fell with the lip until I impacted at the bottom; it felt like a belly-flop off a twenty-foot cliff.  Then...I plunged.  The lip walloped down on me with all the weight of a dumped load of felled lumber from a logging truck.  It did not feel good.

Surfers have an expression: "Only a surfer knows the feeling."  What they're referencing is the utter stoke one gets from riding a wave.  What no surfer can effectively relate, is what it's like to get "rag-dolled" underwater by a big wave.  Only a surfer who's been through it, knows that feeling as well.  It's not fun.  Few other experiences in life more clearly illustrate the relative powerlessness of human beings when matched against the power and fury of nature's forces.  Maybe an ant under the rushing force of a kitchen faucet, or a spider swirling down a toilet drain can relate, but imagine being clutched by a huge fist, and shaken, all your limbs torquing in contrary attitudes, then tossed haphazardly as if you were the die tumbling across the table in a Vegas craps game, swirled and hurled and twirled until you had no idea which was up, which was down, dark green water, and darker shadows passing before your vision, until the shadows overpower the green, and only the dark remains, and you keep tumbling, head over heels over head over heels over...

I'd been slammed under by big surf before.  Once you realize you're not going to die, it's not so bad.  You just try to relax and hold your breath...flow with it.  Eventually the force subsides, releases, and you drift up to the surface; sometimes it's almost a rush to feel that power.  But this was different.  It wasn't stopping. This wave kept tumbling me, kept pushing me under, sucking me up, then sucking me under again.  I worried about hitting bottom; it's all rocks and boulders at Fox Hill.  What if I hit my head and was knocked unconscious?  I tried to cover my skull with my forearms but the force kept wrenching my arms in different directions. 

What I didn't realize until after was that I was getting dragged underwater, along the length of the point!  When the wave wouldn't let go, I started to fight...kick and claw, even though I knew this would hasten the depletion of my oxygen.  But I couldn't just let it keep tumbling me!

Fighting was futile.  When you're in the grips of such a primal source of Nature's power, there is no fighting. I relaxed and flowed with it again; tried to conserve my air.

Eventually, the force did start to diminish but I had the weird sense of neutral buoyancy.  The water was so agitated that I was neither sinking or rising as I usually do with the aid of my wetsuit which is a natural flotation device.  I started to swim for the surface.  Only as I swam, instead of a growing light as I approached the surface, it all became darker around me.  That's when the first inklings of true panic manifested; I'd never experienced this before, didn't know what to do.  

When I hit something hard with my hands, I realized I'd become so disoriented that I'd swum straight into the bottom...I somersaulted, pushed off with my feet, and started swimming again.  But I was really deep.  And it was utterly dark around me.  Panic swelled.  I kept swimming, but it was slow going.  And I was about out of air.  I fought harder...used more air.  The surface wasn't coming...oh, dear God, this is it, I figured...  I was at my limit, no more O2 fumes, no more strength...I found myself making the conscious decision: "I'm taking a breath...if it's air, I live, if it's water, I die...

It was air.

I popped the surface and gulped...half a breath...then was slammed under again by the following wave.  Tumbled.  Tossed.  Rag-dolled.  I saw stars, just like in the cartoons, when I surfaced after that one...

Miraculously, my board was still with me; my leash hadn't snapped.  I hauled aboard and started paddling out of the path of the next wave.  I couldn't even feel my arms.  When I'd moved into deeper water, I laid there a few moments...  I'd come as close to my own death as I ever wanted to come, and I realized: I. Do. Not. Matter.  The wave that almost killed me, was just a wave.  Though I was so full of myself as a human being...Nature, the Ocean, that wave, did not care.  I was, I am, just a puny human being, inconsequential to the world around me, in the grand scheme.  It was, and remains, a humbling lesson. 

I did paddle back out that day, after that wave.  I knew if I didn't, I might never surf there, might never surf big waves again.  I sat for about two more hours, as darkness fell, as real stars started salting the darkening sky...  And I did catch a wave in; a half-size inbetweener just to get me to the shore, back to land. 

Big surf still scares me to this day.  I want to ride it, I still paddle out when it comes, I even shaped myself an 8 footer for when my own personal "Big Wednesday" should come again.  But it gives me the willies...each time I find myself underwater, tumbling, holding my breath, trying to relax in that deep dark place...