What is Surfing?

Ah...the age-old question. Ask this question to a sample group of, say, twenty people, and you’re probably bound to get a wide range of responses.

I’m not sure when people started to ask this question, but it seems that it began to be asked seriously in the mid-1960’s, when surf culture began to get really introspective.

There was a movement that began to take shape at that time which was called...

“Total Involvement”

My own memory of that period reveals the Total Involvement school actually predated the “shortboard revolution” by a year or so. The movement to the shortboard was a result of something that happened in the mass psyche of the young surfer of the day...an acute desire to approach waveriding in a totally new way, which could perhaps be characterized as fast and flowing, employing swooping arcs in rapid flight across the face of waves, and centering upon proximity to “the tube”... the hallowed inner recess of the breaking wave.

Is today’s young surfer still in step with this Total Involvement idea? Or, do many surfers approach surfing as just a series of “photo ops”... and not at all about their own personal relationship with the wave as an artistic statement?

Indeed, this question begs an answer that, today, may immediately divide the surfing world, more acutely than ever, into it’s two major historical camps: surfing as sport, and surfing as art.

There is also a third major element: surfing as business. This manifests at every surf shop on every coast, and is also the reason many of us surf in the first place...because somewhere along the line we saw a magazine, or saw a movie, like The Endless Summer (that was my first). However, in 1962 I saw my first SURFER magazine and, though it would be three more summers before I actually rode, I was instantly jazzed.

So what’s the “jazz” all about? Why do we do this?

I think surfing answers a particularly human need, which is answered by engaging in a number of activities, but by no method as magnificently as in surfing. To fly like a bird upon the surface of the ever changing fluid medium of a wave is absolutely unique! It’s an opportunity for us to leave terra firma and re-enter the sea from which life emerged (We are H2O!).

The sea is mysterious and, while there, we are explorers. We have with us a cool blade upon which we glide within and through the “oceanic undulations” that mark the ever moving reality of the seashore. Moreover, there is a tribal warrior-like attraction to surfing, and thus there is a social element that cannot be denied...a “beach culture” to which we belong, even if we approach surfing as a way to get away and be alone.

Quite simply, surfing is our way of life.

As Gerry Lopez once said, all the other stuff we do just fills in the time between swells.

My recommendation: stay focused. There’s a swell on the way. Secure your favorite wax, and set aside a board or two for your next journey.

In the sea, you will find yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ logjammer April 22, 2005