Damn Wave the
Thriving
(not just Surviving)
on a Surfboard
H
By Hannah Nordhaus
Brent had surfed since he was a kid and, while he was patient and kind while guiding Heather and me into the whitewater and shouting encouraging phrases—like “Go!”—he was not terribly clear in his explanations. For Brent, the idea of steering a fiberglass board through oncoming whitewater, and then turning it around and standing up and making turns on that fluid force, was second nature. He didn’t have a verbal explanation to break it down for someone who had never done it before. And what’s more, he was a guy—the kind of laidback guy that doesn’t do a lot of explaining.
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WAM • SUMMER | 2012
Here’s how a typical session went:
Silence.
“Hey Brent?”
A few minutes, a few poundings later, I’d try again. “Hey Brent?”
“What?” “When you’re standing up on the wave, do you jump up with your front or back foot first?”
“What?”
“Both.”
“I don’t know. Just catch the wave.”
“How?”
And then he’d do just that, and I’d wallow around in the whitewater, waiting
“Just paddle into the wave and get up.”
“Do you paddle with your hands deep in the water, or shallow?”
womensadventuremagazine.com
All imAges justin bAstien
ere’s how I learned to surf: My husband Brent and I flew to Panama with two shortboards and a friend named Heather. We disembarked in Panama City, rented a jeep, and headed for the coast, where Heather and I flailed around for a week in what seemed like monstrous, insurmountable swells. At night, I dreamed of tsunami-sized waves bearing down on me, although I’m told they were only a couple of feet high.