Carve Magazine issue184 Back Issue

The end of every year is a period of reflection.
We review everything that’s gone down in our own little worlds as the planet completes another loop around the sun. It’s easy to forget that we get our waves from the sun, especially in December, when it’s scraping the horizon, taunting us with weak, but beautiful golden light. It’s the energy from the sun, waves themselves, heating our atmosphere that is the mixing spoon that stirs storms into life. A vast, impossible to comprehend, nuclear inferno 93 million miles away, affecting weather systems hundreds of miles out in the ocean is why we can slide around in the sea. You’re riding solar energy every time you ride a wave and we’re all just a bunch of cosmic dust temporarily stuck together for the ride. Which is something to ponder next time you’re sat out back at your favourite spot … or not.
Whatever nonsense goes on in your life, in the news, especially in the increasingly baffling world of politics, it’s all temporary. It will all pass.
I think that’s why surfing is so addictive.
It is, in the main, bullshit free.
The solace you can enjoy while bobbing around on your board, filling your lungs with fresh sea air, being one with the environment, is unbeatable. The cleansing beatings of winter duckdives are invigorating. Riding solar energy on a board is ridiculous in the best way, it’s impossible not to smile, your mind glows. Just being in the ocean connects you to something it’s hard to describe, no matter how good or bad the waves. As much as the nonsense of daily life is soothed by time in the sea one thing isn’t: the damage we’re doing to our spinning orb and we are all responsible. Any review of 2017, surf poor as it was for most, but thumbs up for WWIII not starting, so that’s a bonus, has to conclude that the outlook for the ocean is not exactly positive. We’re murdering it slowly with our plastic obsession, in ways we don’t even realise.