An Understanding

It's two in the morning and I have found this hour once again in the fashion of being too tired to do anything but sit in front of my computer and too awake from work to simply go to sleep. I have a Newcastle in my hands ( I silently wish I had a brown ale from Landon, I won't tell the Newcastle that but it's the simple late night truth). Daniel's music plays on my speakers, Lying in the Grass to be specific, and I'm kind of enjoying listening to something beautiful and understanding what every word means to the author. An ideal that I spoke of the other day to an old new friend. The ideal that I have a first hand understanding of Daniel's music, where his lyrics come from and how I can feel where he found the inspiration for the chords which match the days and nights we spent living his lyrics. And I think it's the simple fact of understanding which drives me to write in this early morning.

My first posts, back in California, were to help me make right a situation which I had let get out of control. Then my writings evolved to mirror my growth and my little day to day adventures. Now being back in the shelter of what I know best, I am enjoying having a strong understanding of the hows and whys to what makes me content and, well, happy for a better word. I have recently seen this in myself while bartending at Castle Hill, of all places. Daily I have hundreds of people come into my life, for short periods of time, and look to me to educate them on what it is that awes them so in this little piece of heaven. And, well, I can tell them how the tides work, where their fish, scallops, and oysters come from, and as was the case on Tuesday, when the weather will change. I felt the wind change, I stepped outside of my cabana bar, looked at the flag pinned in an east wind and said that we would start getting weather at 9:30. I was about 20 minutes off.

This summer we have been fortunate enough to have some early action in Caribbean and subsequently have experienced some early hurricane swell. Nothing of huge proportions but enough to keep us surfers chatty and excited. Daniel, Kevin and I scored a great session and an even better day the day after my birthday. As if surfing with them wasn't good enough, I surfed with this understanding in my mind. I will not proclaim that I was the best out there or that my knowledge makes me better in the water than anyone else but I will say that it grounds and focuses me. I find myself slipping off my board more and more often to dive the length of my leash and find the colder water away from the surface. Simply trying to soak up the solace that comes from being under water where I am but an awed visitor. Hurricane, by Daniel, plays now and it's fitting for it's my favorite song of his for it is about the storms which we have pounded our coast and how they have molded us into the men that we are today. "Hurricane won't you come my way," he sings and then continues, "My coast has been waiting on your waves." This is what we know, this is what we are and we are privileged to be molded by these storms. Anybody with any skill can come and surf the waves we do here on our beaches and our points, however it takes a true understanding of the lore and love of this point to find the shore after a waist to chest high day and be completely satisfied. A simple understanding that has taken 28 years to find me...