There
is that one day, usually in the second half of August, when you know
that fall is coming. The overnight temperature begins to drop below
sixty, in the evenings it is no longer uncomfortable to wear long pants
or even a sweatshirt, you begin to wear a wetsuit in the morning surf
again, and the shape of the waves begins to change. This latter event is
open to considerable speculation; it is considered a myth by those of a
scientific mind and even by some surfers. But watermen know that
something different begins to occur with the delivery of energy through
water, and they adjust their sails, the trim tabs on their hulls, the
nuance and knots of their surfcasting tackle, and their technique
accordingly.
Metaphorically,
this is especially noted by the early morning surfers, all of whom are
over the age 45. The younger set doesn’t go to bed until 3 or 4 in the
morning; they don’t wake until noon or so. Those of us who are parents
and grandparents are up and in the water in time to see the sun rise
from a gray/mauve/red horizon [well, at least on the eastern seaboard]
and all of us know the familiar challenges of being middle-aged and
older.
After
a week of so or mornings such as this, I’m feeling a little weakness in
my right knee. My shoulder has been making a popping sound whenever I
reach behind me, and I have to warm up a little before I can turn my
head all the way to the left. Although we don’t catalog our signs of
maturity with one another, the “dawn patrol” knows from its mild
grimaces of discomfort or slight limps that we are feeling the effects
of having graced creation for a half century or more. Sometimes the
simple chore of putting on a wetsuit seems a reenactment of Leighton’s
“Hercules Wrestling with Death”.
On
this particular morning, the waves, even with their altered shape, are
not quite ready for us. They are low, slow, and weak. When younger, we
would sit on the beach and wait it out or, more likely, enter the water
and wait and wait. We had all day, after all. However the cold water and
the colder air are a little uncomfortable in our maturity, so we do the
better thing and walk about the beach collecting the detritus left from
the day before. To paraphrase William Carlos Williams, we pick up the pure products of America Go Sloppy.
“My
grandkids learn about the environment in school,” says an older
waterman with whom I am picking up an assortment of soda cups, cheese
steak wrappers, and, interestingly, a stained “Obama ‘08” t-shirt.
“When they visit me, they turn off my lights, unplug my coffee maker and toaster, and generally hector me about being a better re-cycler. Then they come to the beach and forget all that. It was never this messy back in the day.”
“When they visit me, they turn off my lights, unplug my coffee maker and toaster, and generally hector me about being a better re-cycler. Then they come to the beach and forget all that. It was never this messy back in the day.”
“You
know what I find weird?", he continued. "Back then there were hardly
any trash cans on the beach, yet people took their refuse with them at
the end of the day. Now we’ve got cans for trash, cans for bottles, cans
for newspapers or [stuff], cans for I don’t know what. They’re all over
the beach; like every 25 feet or so. Yet, look at all the [stuff]
people leave.”
“They
don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t care, I guess. As long as they
use the right words their actions don’t have to match. They must of have
learned that from celebrities. Maybe politicians.”
Another
dawn patroller arrives, looks at the sad state of the surf, smiles at
us and speaks the cliché that has been ironic since the 1960’s: “You
should have been here yesterday.” We laugh, but my elder companion looks
at the surf, then the trash, then the surf again. “I think I’m going to
start saying, ‘You should be here tomorrow.’”
[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]