I don’t know how many times I can say it, but I experience a great amount of peace while surfing. This image was taken at Pacific City, Kape Kiwanda, probably sometime around the beginning of college. The friend I mentioned from Revisiting the past, part III who was our youth leader supplied me with the board pictured here. It was probably a very inexpensive board, but it was a birthday gift during my Junior year of high school. It was called the Morning Star. Unfortunately it was stolen from a friend who was borrowing it on a trip to Mexico, when he left it on top of his truck over night during a climb at Yosemite. It began my journey of surfing, just like when I purchased my first pair of skis from a garage sale for $10 (whole package of purple K2′s, boots, poles). By having that board, space was created for me to float upon the ocean and experience nature in a completely new way, one in which my reverence for the power of nature would be awakened (near death surfing experience at Indian Beach), one in which I would find room to meditate and be present with God. Someone else took this picture, possibly my good friend Greg, and I later developed it myslef in a traditional darkroom, and have here photographed it with my digital camera as my scanner is lacking in any such quality that would be attributed to something that could replicate what it is trying to scan. There is no specific story here, just the feeling of joy and peace that is found when one picks up a surfboard and begins walking into the breakers.
by Joel
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