No, I mean the beautiful violence of breaking waves. It is a constant. In small waves and weaker waves, it’s mild, benign, unthreatening, under control. It’s just the great ocean engine that propels us and allows us to play. That mood changes as the waves get more powerful. Surfers call power “juice,” and the juice becomes, in serious waves, the critical element, the essence of what we are out there to find, to test ourselves with—to recklessly engage or cravenly avoid. My own relationship with this substance, with this steel thread, has become only more vivid over time.
