Anylitical Blog 10/2/14: Earth Connections

While turning over the pages of Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave for a few days now, I've learned about all of the different kinds and stereotypes of surfers from a first hand account in southern California, the Mecca of board culture as a whole. Reinforcing my previous opinion, the text of this book clearly displays the fact that all who surf surf for a different reason; each who surfs finds a different high from the sport, and each who surfs goes about the sport in a different way. There are those who are aggressive towards others that get in their way, and, there are those who go out of their way to make surfing a more enjoyable experience for others. One section in my readings introduced a new idea to me, and idea that relates all surfers to others. Each rider has a very unique and strong connection with mother nature. Why is this? Isn't the majority of the surfing crowd just a bunch of people who chose adrenaline over the SAT's? Well, the answer to that question is yes; although that goes to show how important the activity is to their lives. This raises the question: why is it such a crucial part of their lives? This is, in my opinion, because it is such a direct contact with earth and what it has to offer us.

Photo: Parajape

 It was no shock to me when I read that the Surfrider Foundation was responsible for the second largest Clean Water Act in American history. Those who surf truly know how amazing the earth is because we use it in such an amazing way. Treating such a powerful force as the ocean is in such an enjoyable and expressive way is what makes a surfer so incredibly humble to mother nature. The Surfrider Foundation is an organization based out of Oregon that takes steps not only to preserve what hasn't been touched but to rehabilitate the areas that have. In Kook, the author goes on to describe how a portion of California's coastal wetlands was approved to be slated and used as an area for marinas, ports and high rises along with southern California's 85% of coastal wetlands already lost to development. This lagoon known as Bolsa Chica was part of the Pacific Flyway, the worlds largest north/south bird migration route in the planet. In 1997, the Foundation "stopped the project and got the state to put up $91 million to restore the marsh and to widen a cut through the beach to increase crucial tidal flow." At 880, it has been one of the biggest and most successful coastal wetland restoration projects in the country and as both preserved and and reestablished a stepping-stone in the flyway for migrating waterfowl. As the industry that follows board culture gains more popularity and wealth, it is easily foreseeable that those involved in the lifestyle will use their earth-minded heads to take steps in creating more funds and actions to preserve and revive the acres upon acres that they share a special connection with.

Bolsa Chica Wetlands

Photo: Ed O'Donnel