Friday, October 21, 2005
New reports
from last Saturday and Wednesday. To the right is a new reader supplied picture from points north. Below is a another reader submitted writing for your Friday enjoyment:
Dream Session. David Coggins
Perched atop a pale green and sandy brown cliff, I waited silently like a temple priest waits for a promising sign from the gods, as a solid five-foot set came rolling in from the deep waters of the Pacific. I looked up and out across the heart of the Monterey Bay while the sky draped itself in a faint alabaster hue. The sun god was burning up the sky across the Midwest on toward the West Coast and sleepy California. The water’s surface was smooth as glassy. It was a solemn, holy place that wouldn’t have disturbed an otter’s slumber or a sea cucumber’s repose. Tranquility reigned within the moment, stirred only by the sound of the breaking surf. It was the end of February, and wave after wave nonchalantly passed over the few predawn surfers as they bowed their heads under the water in supplication to this holy place.
The sky was clear, the air brisk and cold. A feathery brush stroke of orange floated across the eastern sky, and I imagined Ra, the sun god, as he charged the Sierra Nevada, and marched across the San Joaquin Valley with his golden legions pressed up against the coastal gates, nearly come to burst forth onto the shore in flame and glory.
This was “Dawn Patrol.” I’d come here to the water’s edge, like all the surfers before me, and all the surfers that would follow, to check the swell, to see if it was worth going out, to breathe the tranquil essence of the coastal morning, to meditate with the creator, and to seek out the dream. I’d come before dawn to avoid the crowds, to get the first sunlit waves of the day and beat the traffic home before work.
I glanced left and down the beach along the cliffs to a local temple of sand, sea, and surf, while the sun rolled up to the rim of the coastal range, and strokes of brilliant red orange jumped up across the sky. My feet retraced the pilgrims’ path along the cliff’s edge past the green and white stilt house that jutted out over the rocks and water, past the stairs at 38th Avenue, past the tiny pink and white bungalow that sits precariously on the edge of the cliff, teetering above the little teacup shaped beach below.
Before long, I stood at the top of the stairs overlooking my morning temple of meditation, board tucked under my right arm like a supplicant’s prayer book, as the sun peaked over the eastern rim of the coastal range, and a golden brilliance splashed across the sky and water. My second skin reflected the radiance of the moment; in sky blue, yellow trimmed wetsuit, I felt as a dawn god come from the Elysian Fields to grace the shore in blessed peace.
I stepped out into the fields of gold, and down to the small beach as a high priest of the ancients come to offer up the morning sacrifice, to prostrate myself before the god of creation, and lay down some righteous turns and cut-backs across the face of the water. It was an odd sensation that passed through me this morning, as if the hand of god reached down and laid the mantle of dreams across my shoulders, and gifted me the desire of my heart.
Blinded by the sun as it rose above the eastern mountaintops, I felt as Moses when he came face to face with the glory of his god. I drank from the jubilant cup and breathed the joy of the pilgrim’s passage. I had journeyed long through the wilderness, but now I reached my goal and the shores of heaven, to bask in the glory and receive the gift. I knew that I had found the dream that all surfers dream, a session so pure as to transform mortal flesh for a brief time into that which is holy and eternal. I turned toward shore at once and joined with the wave, and stood upon the deck of my board as one who accepts his birth right as a pure and immortal being. I glowed from the reflected light of creation, and moved in righteous rhythm with the pulse of the vibrant waters on the blade of a dream.
Transformed by the brilliant gold of shimmering light that burst forth from the surface of the water, I rode the face of the wave like a godly charioteer come from the fields of gold across the morning sky to rest in the shoals by the water’s edge, to gather strength for another run through the plane of sky and water.
It was like that and more, as all creation celebrated itself in harmony and perfection and a dream session passed over from the halls of Elysium to the mortal shores of California. I was transformed by the perfection of a moment, by something pure and holy. It happened that I rode these golden waves for a brief time as the sun made its way higher into the morning sky, and eventually I passed from the immortal shores of heavenly dreams back to the cliffs near Capitola, and the surf spot known to all as “The Hook.”
link to this
Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.
from last Saturday and Wednesday. To the right is a new reader supplied picture from points north. Below is a another reader submitted writing for your Friday enjoyment: