The Wisdom in Water

Several months ago - perhaps even a year - Linda and I watched the movie Surfwise. "SURFWISE follows the odyssey of 85-year-old legendary surfer Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children—all of whom were home-schooled on the beaches of Southern California, Hawaii, Mexico and Israel; they surfed every day of their lives, and were forced to adhere to a strict diet and lifestyle by their passionate and demanding, health-conscious father."

Surfers and some fans of surfing know well the Paskowitz story, but beyond that cultural subset  few knew of Doc or his story.  But perhaps I should first begin with my surfing history - brief as it is.

Frequent Ring Writes readers know that it's only been in recent years that I've developed some coordinated control over my long limbs.  Not always gangly, but rarely nimble, I stuck to games that relied little on eye/hand coordination.  Year by year, sport by sport, I was weaned away from the more talented players.  Sports like soccer, basketball, baseball, and football (we had no program in our town) were played in gym and I was amongst the last player picked..  Hockey  - skating and holding a stick to hit a puck - represented something wholly unimaginable.  Other than a bicycle, things with wheels were downright laughable; I nearly killed myself in attempts at skateboarding, roller skating or blading.  I looked like Gerald Ford coming down a jetway.  I tried skiing and remarkably never busted a bone though I took falls a plenty from Aspen to the Alps.

I soon learned that sports with repetitive movements were something that, with much practice, I could manage.  Bicycling, and running were two simple ones - one foot after the other.  I could even play a bit of golf (though never a great handicap) by grooving a swing that was serviceable.  In college I found crew and rowing to be the perfect complement to my skill set.  I sat on a seat, strapped my feet to a board, and simply inserted an oar into the water and pulled.  Over four years I honed my stroke, eventually making the 1st boat and winning a New England gold medal in our class.  And rowing gets us closer to water and closer to surfing.

It was through rowing that I became acquainted with Phi Mu Delta (PMD).  I joined the novice crew team and soon learned that several of the male rowers on the varsity team were in a fraternity.  I'd never thought that I'd want to be in a fraternity and didn't give it much thought at first.  I just wanted to be on the team.  I was an eager rower, if but a weak novice one.  I was so dedicated to the idea of making a go of it, that I convinced my novice coach to let me sleep at his rooming house over winter break so I could participate in the workouts.  (Deep down I think I also knew there was not a chance I'd perform them as well at home over a month long holiday break).   Living at the house, I grew to know the other roomers.  I soon found out I was living in an alumni crew house.  A couple of the boarders, though much older than I were still finishing their undergraduate degrees, others were taking grad courses.  There were former rowers, both from the men's and women's teams.  Though I was just a few months into my rowing career, I quickly absorbed much about UMass Crew in those few weeks.

One evening, two of the house dwellers, Jill and Michele - who rowed together on the women's team, invited me to drive up to L.L.Bean in Freeport, ME with two friend of theirs, Larry and Josh.  It was late, but Bean is open 24 hours and no one had classes or had to work the next day.  Jill had a behemoth of a station wagon and the five of us piled in and drove through the dead of a cold winter night to Freeport.  We drank beer and laughed most of the way and arrived at L.L. Bean at 2am.  We wandered the empty aisles, sat in display canoes, and even bought a few things.  Jill said she had a friend in Portland on whose floor we could crash.  We took many turns that Jill was guessing at which led us to a house she said she thought  was her friend's.  I am about 6'3; Josh and Larry are both taller and more solid.  The five of us tiptoed loudly into the living room.  Giant Josh laid claim to the couch and the rest of us huddled on chairs and on the floor.

In the morning, I heard people whispering, people I didn't know.  "Who is this?" the voiced inquired.  In a hungover haze, I became aware that these people were stepping lightly through and around us.  I felt sure we were in some stranger's house.  Finally, a person said, "I think that's Jill."  Relieved but still disheveled and embarrassed we demurely left and returned to Amherst.  Jill piloted the big station wagon to the other side of campus from where I lived and pulled behind a large boarding house on N. Pleasant Street that had Greek letters on the front.  The house was neither impressive or inviting.  It looked simply like a beat up boarding house.  From the car, I could see thick plastic covering the windows to keep the January cold out.  We said our goodbyes and Jill, Michele, and I returned to coach's house.  On the way back, I asked what the house was.  Michele and Jill both knowingly chuckled and answered, "It's the Mu."

I didn't know that much about The Mu, but soon learned that my coach was a brother at Phi Mu Delta and so was the lightweight coach.  I learned that nearly a couple of dozen current and former rowers that I knew were Phi Mu Delta's, some proudly and others less overtly.  I also learned there were plenty who were not.  That spring semester, I returned to my dorm, regular classes and continued to train with the crew team.  I was buried somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd novice boat, but still saw Josh and Larry among the rest of our teammates in the gym.  It was not long into the semester that I got a call in my dorm room from Josh.  He wanted to know if I was "interested in coming by the house sometime and meeting the guys."  I declined, politely saying that I wasn't really interested in fraternities.  But Josh is charming and persistent.  And standing several inches taller and weighing many muscular pounds more than me, he's an effective salesman.

He and Larry both, along with a few other PMD rowers made other entreaties.  Finally Josh told me just to come by for "an Exchange."  He explained that it was a small party, usually on Thursday nights in which a different sorority or two came over and we drank beer.  Josh said, "You like girls and beer, don't you? Come on."  Not wanting to go alone I convinced my closest novice rower friend, Russell, to come with me.  The details of my Phi Mu Delta experience are too numerous and at times too embarrassing to delve into here.  The summary is that I pledged that fraternity (as did Russell) and ended up living in the house for the remainder of my three years in college, rowing for the crew team all the while.   But what about surfing?  What about the ocean?  Yes, yes.  I will come to that.

Growing up in landlocked Mansfield, Connecticut, over an hour's drive to the beach, it was a special occasion when we went.  We'd drive to Ocean Beach Park in New London or Rocky Neck in Niantic, but soon we drifted eastward until Watch Hill, Misquamicut, and East Beach became the favorites.  It was out in Rhode Island where you were more likely to find bigger waves.  Though I'd proven myself able to tread water, I wasn't a natural swimmer.  It also so happens that my mother has always been quite protective.  The rule was that I wasn't to go out in water above my armpits. I did some body surfing, jumped around a bit, but when the waves got big, I was relegated to the shallows or the beach.  Sure, I sometimes went out over my head, but I had taken enough underwater tumbles in the rolling surf to know that I wasn't going to tempt the wrath of Poseidon.

While we day tripped to RI from time to time, it was summers that we, along with the masses, drove to Cape Cod for extended vacations.  When I was little we went to Craigville, and even into my early teens we often spent a week or so there.  We also had friends in Eastham and as a preteen (was I ever a tween?) that was the first time I can recall being cognitively aware of the Lower Cape.  We spent many days along bayside sandy beaches.  On clear days you could see the relic that was the Target Ship and sometimes all the way up to the Monument in Provincetown.  Our friends would take us sailing, fishing, and clam-digging.  We boated out to islands that disappeared when the tide came up.  On the ocean side, the water was colder and often there was more surf.  We'd go to beaches up and down the National Seashore - From Nauset in Orleans, up to Nauset Light in Eastham, Marconi in Wellfleet - and every Hollow beach along Cape Cod's forearm from Wellfleet to Truro to P'town.  Our beach visits were so precious that I can remember my sister and I huddled under a blanket on a rainy day as our mom pointed to a light patch of sky saying hopefully, "I think it's clearing!"

In my youth, I might have seen a surfer or two from those beaches.  I now know for certain they were there. But surfing to me then - standing on an unstable board floating on fast flowing waves that were, by definition, going to break - was beyond my mind's projection.  Like skateboarding and the then unknown to me snowboarding, I didn't need any "sport" to challenge my ability to stay upright.  Still, I learned to love the water and as I grew older and into a more confident swimmer, I swam out over my head, let big waves lift me up, and survived the times heavy water pinned me below the surface so long that I wasn't sure which way was up.  When I got scared, I took a break but always braved the waves again.  But I never surfed, knew little of it beyond goofy surf movies or Beach Boys songs.

What I didn't know as a young boy on the Lower Cape in the 1970s was that in late 1980s I'd be living in a fraternity with several guys who spent their summers and between semesters living, working, and playing there.  Beginning the first summer after college, I would make regular trips to the Cape to visit my friends.  Wellfleet was where they went and often that's where I could be found.  My friends worked at the Beachcomber, for the town, at the general store, and for the trash company.  I heard many outrageous stories of parties, girls, fights, thefts, garbage finds, and bonfires.  From what I saw on my weekend visits, I had no reason to suspect any of it as hyperbole.   After college I continued to make trips to the Lower Cape. Sometimes I'd go with family, other times with, or to see friends.  Though up to that point I'd never spent any more than a couple of weeks there, I began to feel comfortable in Wellfleet.  I began to recognize the same people - friends of my friends, people who'd spent the entire summer of their lives there.  And through my friends, I made new friends.  And yet throughout that time I still never surfed.

Flash forward to the mid 1990's.  I'm halfway through my two year graduate degree at UMass - Amherst.  I have the summer off and Steve successfully pitches the idea of me working in Wellfleet for the summer and living with him in what we call the "Suck Shacks" behind our friend Luke's family restaurant in S. Wellfleet.  The Suck Shacks consisted of 5 small cottages.  Some had two bedrooms, others were studios. Each shack was tiny and featured two-burner stinkolaters (sink, stove, refrigerator units).  Having never lived in Wellfleet for a full summer I jumped at the chance.  Our stinkolater was named The Diavlo 5000.

I got two jobs - as a waiter at a pricey Wellfleet restaurant and as a beach officer for the town.  As a waiter, I had to be at work by late afternoon and was done around 12am.  I reported to the beach at 830am.  My job as the assistant manager was to help assign sticker checkers to beach and pond parking lots, give breaks to the staff, and then spend the rest of the time driving around Wellfleet, issuing tickets to illegally parked or unstickered cars.  I was deputized and carried a badge.  And it was during this summer, 1995, that I finally learned about surfing.

Steve was - and still is - an avid surfer.  Though he grew up in Boston, he discovered surfing on the Cape and like so many was immediately hooked.  Our friend Luke (went to UMass, was a PMD, and whose parents owned the Suck Shacks) spent most of the summers of his youth (and still does) in Wellfleet.  Though Luke spent the school year in Foxboro on his skateboard, he spent the summers on the Cape on his surfboard.  By the time I rolled into Wellfleet in 1995, Steve and Luke had both been surfing for years and had already begun their ongoing efforts to surf all over the world.  (Luke is also an accomplished photographer and much of his work features surfing:  www.lukesimpson.com).

Courtesy of lukesimpson.com

Between Luke and Steve there were surfboards all over and in the Suck Shacks.  They were piled on roof racks, hanging in the rafters, leaning against walls - both in and outside.  From them (and other surfer friends of theirs who became friends of mine) I learned about the different boards, what the shapes and sizes were good for.  For years prior Steve had drilled quotes from Endless Summer and Big Wednesday into my head.  But now I was watching obscure surf videos, in Luke's Suck Shack, drunk at 2am.  The next morning, bleary eyed, Luke and/or Steve would wake at dawn to check the surf, the wind.  Sometimes I'd go with them and survey the waves.  "Blown out." "Choppy." Nice lines."  Rippin'".  I began to absorb the language.  Slowly I was being drawn in.  What was it about surfing that could consume my friends so?  Sometimes they'd try to explain it to me, but were rendered speechless only saying that it was too hard to put into words.

Other than playing on a board in small "long board" waves, I had yet to try it myself until that summer.  Steve piled a few boards on top of his ancient station wagon and we drove to the beach.  The waves were small but ridable.  I pulled on a borrowed and very tight-fitting 3/2 wetsuit and Steve handed me an insanely heavy longboard.  It could have kept King Kong afloat.  It was a good board for me to learn on.  The waves weren't so big that I couldn't paddle past them, but big enough for me to paddle into them (a condition I later required for any surfing excursion).  Eventually, I worked my way through the progression of going from my chest to my knees to my feet and then even popping from chest to feet (I bet it didn't look like I popped up, but I felt like I did). After many tries, I finally managed to catch a long ride into the beach. It was fun, and thrilling and I felt a sense of pride in the accomplishment.  Many life-long surfers begin this same way - one ride.  I am not one of those people.

Encouraged by my modest success, I continued to tag along with the surfers from time to time. I held no allusion that I was a natural or that I could begin to even approximate their skill, but I enjoyed it just the same.  I borrowed a board and a suit and managed a couple of other small surfing successes.  But when the waves got big, I got pummeled.  The water rose so quickly and crashed with such ferocity that I spent as much time drinking water as I did paddling through it.  My efforts to stand resulted in swift and impromptu dismounts.  I hung nothing.

Though I'd occasionally try my hand, a serious surfer I would not be.  Still having tried it, having caught a few waves, I did have an inkling of how addictive it could be.  I sensed the oneness with the water that riding a wave offered.  I saw the beach from the water, from well past the area where waves began to crest.  And having watched all those surf movies and having looked through all the surf magazines around the Suck Shack, I began to absorb some of what surfing meant to my friends.  And while I didn't achieve their surfing proficiency, I did come to imbibe the purity which it represents.

So back to this movie, Surfwise, which we watched a while back, but upon which I still regularly reflect.  The story is about this successful doctor who grows so unhappy in his professional life that he decides to chuck it all and live life to its fullest - in his small camper with his wife, his 9 kids, and their surfboards. I won't attempt to sum up the experience - leave that to the documentarians - but certainly Doc developed a philosophy to which he both fiercely subscribed and one which he also enforced in his family - not always to their liking.  Through all Paskowitz's experiences, he honed a life philosophy, summed it up in five elements:  A balance of Diet, Exercise, Rest, Recreation, and Attitudes of Mind.

The Paskowitz Family

Unlike Doc and instead of being surrounded by beaches and waves, I am, these days, mostly surrounded by lush green fields and dense woods.  And yet, like Paskowitz, I, too, endeavor to find balance between diet, exercise, rest, recreation, and attitudes of mind.  And like Paskowitz being near and in the water helps.  In the 15 years since that first Suck Shack summer I've managed to sneak in a Wellfleet weekend or two most summers.  And because I've made many friends there, I still see familiar faces.  Steve still lives there and so does Luke.  There are still boards atop their cars.

Last weekend I spent three days in Wellfleet with my wife and my son, staying with friends.  And this time I went to a beach that I'd driven past for decades, but never been to.  It's Mayo Beach - just down the road from the Wellfleet Pier.  It's a bayside cove and the waves don't get very big - perfect for my toddler son.  He splashed in the water while I stared at the dunes.  Toddlers can be bears and devils.  "No" is Max's favorite word.  Life - with or without a toddler - can be busy, stressful, and frustrating.  Finding time for a balance between "diet, exercise, rest, recreation, and attitudes of mind. isn't a simple task.  Wellfleet helps, wherever your "Wellfleet" happens to be.

One day we were driving down a windy dirt and scrub pine road.  The side view mirror was clipping branches as we followed Jack and Inga's car down the a narrow and wooded fire road.  Further and further we drove.  Surely we were on private property, surely we were lost.  On a piece of land barely a few miles wide surely we would run out of road.  And we did.  Late, late in the afternoon, we arrived at a hidden dune cul-de-sac.  We couldn't see the beach from where we parked.  We couldn't even hear the waves beyond the dune and above the sound of the strong breeze.  We followed a steep path through the grassy dunes, passing a few people as they were leaving.  When after a few minutes, we finally crested the last hill, an empty expanse of beach revealed itself to us.  Here, in Wellfleet, in the middle of a hot and sunny August weekend was an empty beach, no one as far as we could see in either direction.  It was ours.  It was equal parts diet, exercise, rest, recreation and attitudes of mind.  I didn't surf, but I was riding the wave.

Surfwise Trailer

The Arrest

When I was about ten years old I lived in Carriage House Apartments on Hunting Lodge Road in Storrs, CT.  The apartments are less than a mile from The University of Connecticut campus and while they are now full of hard partying students, they were once more populated by grad students and single parents.  I'd wander up and down the cul-de-sac road with playmates who lived in other buildings.  We played cops and robbers, we had forts, and for a brief time it was part of my paper route.

The apartments were bordered by woods and I often delved into them on mini explorations.  By just going a hundred feet in I'd be transported to a some kind of forest retreat.  The ferns were large and lush, sometimes equaling me in height; the mushrooms growing on the decaying trees made me ponder the mysteries of nature.  I lifted rocks to see scurrying insects and I watched slugs ooze their way forth.  I often caught poison ivy, but was rarely deterred from going back into those woods.

One day, I went further into the woods than I'd ever gone.  To me it felt as if I was miles away, though I now know it was more like a football field's distance.  (When you're young, small distances seem great and the fact that the woods were dense lent to the perception of being much removed from my apartment.)  After meandering around a while, I stumbled upon a trail and followed it.  Soon the trees became more sparse and I could see some buildings ahead.  There were three apartment buildings - they looked abandoned.  I didn't even detect a road that led to them.  There was a front door that was ajar.  I pushed it open and saw a door to an apartment to my left and right.  Stairs led up to two more apartments. All the doors were open.  Peering in, I saw discarded furniture and no signs of residents.  For a child who liked to explore, I felt like I'd stumbled upon some kind of archeological discovery.  It was late in the afternoon and I knew I had to be getting home, but I vowed to return.

A few days later I told my friend, Rainer, a boy who I often played with who lived in another building up the road about my discovery.  I told him roughly where I'd found it and that we'd have to go back to check it out.  It was shortly after that two other friends, Ron and Micah were over and I instead took them through the woods to the enchanting structures (or 'attractive nuisances' in legal parlance).  I led them down the path up to the first of the three buildings.  They were initially timid about venturing in.  I assured them that no one lived there, that the doors were open.  We three boys wandered into one of the upstairs apartments and peered into the dank and musty rooms.  Who had lived here, we wondered.  Why did they leave all this stuff?  It was weird, a bit scary, and exhilarating, too.

One of us, I forget who, found a box of square bathroom tiles.  Someone was dared to throw one.  The dare was taken.  One of us did it first:  held the tile like a Ninja throwing star and hucked it with all our mini-might.  It twirled, disc-like, and burst through a window.  The glass exploded with a delightful crash.  It wasn't long before we'd emptied the box and glass was scattered everywhere.  I think if pressed, we might have known what vandalism was, but at the time, it didn't register that we were guilty of it.

We wandered into the kitchen.  For some insane reason there were cases of cream cheese in an unplugged refrigerator.  It wasn't Philly brand, but it was those same oblong bricks packaged in thick silver foil.  In the ceiling of the kitchen was a square hole leading up to an attic crawl space.  The hole was uncovered and one of us ingeniously conceived of a game.  Open the cream cheese package so that one end was open and the other was still covered in foil.  The aim then was to throw the brick o' cream cheese in just such a way as to propel it into the attic and have it stick to the roof so that it didn't come back down after pitching it up.  This was a lot of fun.  We were sad to see that box of cream cheese empty.

The three of us wandered from apartment to apartment wreaking similar havoc as we went.  When we'd exhausted the entertainment in one building we moved on to the next and then to the last of the three.  In that one, we found old furniture and reveled in pitching it down the stairs.  It was marvelous to watch the furniture tumble end over end, legs of chairs and tables flew off as they careened down.  The whole escapade is somewhat blurry in my memory, but I do recall a lot of laughter, excitement, and joy.  I am sure some of that was because we knew what we were doing was illicit, but boys like to break stuff and we'd found a treasure trove of seemingly abandoned wares to destroy.  The place was a pit before we'd entered it, surely we weren't causing anyone any harm....

Someone heard a voice outside.  We froze.  I can still feel the way my heart pounded in my chest.  We all immediately hid out of instinct.  Someone peered out the window and announced that it was just Rainer!  Phew, it was only Rainer coming to find us at the buildings I'd told him about a few days prior.  What a relief!  We stood up and went to make our way out of the building, but soon saw that Rainer was not alone, with him was an elderly woman.  We wanted to run, but the furniture we'd tossed down the stairs was blocking the door!  We were trapped, trapped by our own stupidity.  The woman told that we come out and slowly but surely we moved enough debris away to squeeze our way out.  Our heads hung low; she told us to follow her to her house.

It turned out that while Rainer was trying to find us, he'd stumbled upon this woman's house.  She asked him what he was up to and he told her he was looking for the old buildings I'd told him about.  She knew just the ones and led him to us.  Amazingly she didn't seem mad and she never raised her voice to us.  In fact, when we got to her home and while we waited for the police to arrive, she gave us cookies and something to drink.  Her husband came by shortly thereafter.  He wasn't as nice.  In fact he was a real jerk.  I don't remember what he said exactly, but he was mean, mean in the way a ten year old knows what mean is.  He was mean for means sake.  We were caught, but he still insisted on threatening us.  We were thankful when the police came.

The cops arrived and we were told to call our parents and then sit in the cruiser while the officer presumably took statements.  I remember that though I was scared, I thought the inside of the cruiser was really cool.  My mom was still at work, but my older sister, Elise, was at home.  As it turned out the house were were in was very close to the apartments and she walked over in a matter of minutes.  My sister (who would later go to Harvard Law School) took great umbrage at our treatment and got into a heated exchange with the officer.  Not long afterward, my mom arrived.  She, too, was less than pleased.  She couldn't conceive how we'd thought this was something that was okay to do.  Micah and Ron's moms felt the same.  Our fathers all were less appalled.  Boys will be boys, they said.

In the weeks that followed we were interviewed by the insurance investigator.  Sometime before that the three of us juvenile delinquents agreed to say that we'd only vandalized one of the three buildings.  The other two were like that when we got there, we were to say.  And we did.  But that insurance investigator was too shrewd.  When he interviewed me he said that the other boys told him we'd vandalized all three, not just the one.  This is exactly what he told Micah and Ron, too.  I caved immediately.  Sipowicz wasn't needed to break us!  Some weeks after that, I reported to Willimantic Juvenile Court.  All three of us received probation and the promise that if we kept out of trouble (we did) our records would be expunged (they were).

When word got out around town about our arrest, there were many varied reactions.  Teachers were shocked, appalled, disappointed.  A friend of the family tried to make us feel better by telling us he'd once burned down a field as a youth (though his destruction was more the result of improper magnifying glass use than intentional wreckage).   Another family friend praised our demolition work for he knew the property owner to be a real jerk.  And later I found out that he really was a jerk and a criminal, too.  He later tried to burn down those properties to get the insurance money!  For many years, I drove past his house and could see those buildings hidden mostly by trees.  When the old man was out front, I'd honk my horn.  He'd wave and I'd give him the finger.  Boys will be boys.