29.6

Lenny switched from his 10-foot gun to a smaller tow-board, grabbed the handle of the rope, and nodded to his driver to whip him into whatever was deemed “unrideable.” With that, he proceeded to ride over a dozen waves with superhuman endurance—slinging into behemoths, streaking across the rippled faces, dancing beneath falling guillotine peaks, air-dropping two stories down, capping waves off with corked backflips.

A few days before, Ben and I had witnessed the international company’s methodical and unflinching strategy to destroy the land for private gain. Yet here we celebrate the wild, organic, and ritualistic grace of the village economy—cutting down a single tree for communal benefit.

Might this be what some positive spirits term “aquatic mindfulness meditation?” Concentration? Serenity? Bliss? Nope. No dry-land therapies, please. No counting of breaths, no training of the mind. In the ocean, one mostly gives in—consents to surrender.

As that first autumn of ours deepened, the crowds of summer surfers and tourists disappeared. The parking lot was mostly empty. Then winter came. It revealed the social workings of the hardcore, year-round surfing subculture.

For high-risk spots, I have the option of deploying a sniper’s ghillie suit. It obscures the human shape, and I become a shaggy blob that’s invisible from only a few meters if I stay still.

Hikes on land required a guide armed with a large-caliber gun due to the constant threat of polar bears. This danger was very real, and once I even found myself confronted by a polar bear while shooting a small pointbreak from land.

Though the early origins of wave riding are most frequently thought of as Polynesian, or perhaps spawned in Peru, evidence indicates that it was and is a natural thing for man or child to be drawn to wherever conditions are suitable.