It was physical, this postsurf mood, but it had a distinct emotionality too. “What was consistent was a certain serenity that followed a rigorous session. It’s the part we all tend to forget-stupid sessions, waves missed, waves blown, endless-seeming lulls.” The postsurf zen

Thus a ten-foot wave is not slightly more powerful than an eight-foot wave-because the leap is not from eight to ten but from sixty-four to a hundred, making it over 50 percent more powerful.” Frustration in surfing “The power of a breaking wave does not increase fractionally with height, but as the square of its height. “For me, and not only for me, surfing harbors this paradox: a desire to be alone with waves fused to an equal desire to be watched, to perform.” How the power of a wave works I always feel a ferocious ambivalence: I want to be nowhere else I want to be anywhere else.” The paradox of surfing An unearthly beauty saturates an enormous arena of moving water, latent violence, too-real explosions, and sky. Terror and ecstasy ebb and flow around the edges of things, each threatening to overwhelm the dreamer. “With music as with waves, he said, you are ‘yielding to something more powerful than yourself.’” What it’s like to experience big surf Above all else, he describes the joys, perils, and zen of the surfer’s path in elegant and profound ways.īuy this book on Amazon (Highly recommend)Īccess My Searchable Collection of 100+ Book Notes Key Takeaways Yielding to something more powerful than yourself Through his tale a lifelong surfer, writer William Finnegan takes you on an exciting journey across the world.

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan