It’s All Too Beautiful
It's all so beautiful..
It's so easy to forget
about what a thing we do
You can get used to doing anything Stuff just becomes routine but He revels A moment of clarity And it all became real The beauty became clear and so it is with waves and seas.A few of us Irishmen were in Barbados, the water was luminous turquoise, wearing board shorts, paradise holiday stuff at this break call 'Duppy's' which breaks about half a mile out to sea. The waves were hopping, double over head and paradise. Before duckdiving the waves in the white water the brightness was insane, the mid day sun was just blasting my eyes, the kind of brightness you don't get on the west coast of Ireland and there's the sham Richie Fitz from Bundoran racing across a wave infront of me and I just thought.. 'This is the sport of kings'. And that was the extent of my revelation! That thought hadn't crossed my mind since I watched the Duke in a rehash of Waikiki in the old days with Ukele music tweaking at my emotions. But yep, that moment of... 'Surfing is just as good as it gets here on planet earth as far as appreciation and involvement in nature is concerned'. Now I love to think about this stuff, where it all came from. Here's something else I want to share with you that's really been on my mind over the past year or so. How does it work that the waves are just so perfect at these epic surf breaks throughout the world. Well what do I mean? Ok when for example you look at a classic surf town like Bundoran. There's about 12 reefs in the town that peel exactly at the speed that (or a little slower) a surfer travels on a surfboard. Did it just happen to be like that or were they put here for our enjoyment. Is that just a load of rubbish. Well look at Bali for example. How many waves are there on that island that just travel at the perfect speed down the reef, some mellow some gnarly, Impossibles almost goes too fast, Medewii almost goes to slow.
Have you ever passed through a town where there is 12 waves in a town or on an island, all travelling too fast, yep we've all got the places where there's a reef that almost works or the reef that sections to fast, or maybe it's a case of we just don't bother going to those places cause the waves are too fast. But no I don't think so. Waves seem to have happened or designed, evolved whatever way you like to look at it, mainly breaking at a speed that exactly matches what we can do on a surf board.. What really did this for me was the wave under the Cliffs of Moher. Well it's just sitting there waiting to be surfed for centuries waiting for a guy like Mikey Smith to come along and say, yep it can be surfed. It breaks, barrels and then backs off before hitting the cliff. You could say it was tailor made for crazy Australian bodyboarders or jet ski assisted surfers. Just sitting there. How come it's so perfect. Then there's a left hander just a few hundred metres away even more pyscho, breaking right in front of a cliff and on it's day it's the most perfect wave I've ever seen. Ok so it seems that swells just happen to travel at a certain speed that more than usually they hit a perfectly formed reef and usually run down it at a speed that is amazingly the same kind of speed we cover on a surf board. Just like you've got different types of boards designed for different surfers and for different types of waves, nature throws up a parallel, we've got waves designed for longboarders and waves like pipe for Hawaiian chargers. Wave riding and 'the miracle of an amazing wave', it all amazes me. We are just invited into the wonders of nature and the amazing creation this world is, a bit more than your ping pong and clay pigeon shooting national champions. An America friend I had always used to say to me, 'it's a good life John and I'm glad your in it'. The more I look at it the more I think he was onto something.
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John McArthy's 10 most recent posts..
- summer’s over…
- Record Breakers
- It’s All Too Beautiful
- Just a thought
- Slainte from Eire
- Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It
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