A Surfing Life

Reading 'Barbarian Days' by William Finnegan. One of the more beautiful reads of the year. Many things to say about the joy and delight and inspiration of the book, but perhaps a quote. Even to a non-surfer like me, the book holds in its enchantment of surf that I keep seeing it as a metaphor in other things. To a reader, perhaps found in reading.

"The close, painstaking study of a tiny patch of coast, every eddy and angle, even down to individual rocks, and in every combination of tide and wind and swell -- a longitudinal study, through season after season -- is the basic occupation of surfers at their local break. Getting a spot wired -- truly understanding it -- can take years. At very complex breaks, it's a lifetime's work, never completed."