riding the wind
Whenever the wind reaches ten miles an hour, whitecaps begin to break on the surface of the water, and my phone starts to ping with messages from a WhatsApp group of “people who like to ride the wind”.
“The South End (of Rockland Harbor) might be good.”
“Wind angle might be better at the breakwater?”
“I’m thinking of Temple Heights at the top of the bay.”
Monday is a preacher’s day off, so when the phone comes alive with news that the wind is up on a free day, it’s like dreaming about where we're going to play after school.
The cool kids invited me into the group when wing-foiling came into my life a couple years ago. I was in my fifties, but the new sport and the comradery that came with it had me feeling I was twelve again
As much as I love wing-foiling, I don’t care for its name. It deserves better. Some sports, like windsurfing or hang-gliding, reveal their essence in the simple speaking of their name. Wing-foiling sounds clunky and silly, like a maybe chicken clutching a sword? Some even call it wing-dinging. The rhyme is fun, but if you don’t what you’re talking about, wing-dinging could points to a thousand different directions. Whatever we call it, this new thing the closest I’ve come to soaring over the waves like a pelican.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it was possible to fly a hydrofoil surfboard with an inflatable wing. And even after seeing someone else do it, I would need to try it myself before knowing in my bones how it works. .
Learning how came with a lot of falls. But also with an equal number of climbs back out of the water. As with everything I’ve ever learned, in school or anywhere else, it began by starting. And trying, and repeating mistakes and failures, until enough little successes came together for the right moment when - all of a sudden - for the first time, I was flying over the water, amazed. Until that moment, I could not see how my brain and bones and heart and soul really were always connected in ways I could not see.
I’ve gotten pretty good - for an old guy learning a new sport. But I still have so much to learn. I still fall, sometimes a lot, especially when attempting to connect turns or go in new directions. But when I’m out in the wind and waves, flying over the water, like a twelve year old boy, laughing at the thought of being a pelican, I remember in such moments how much is coming to together in beautiful ways that we cannot see, until we know, in our bones, that what once seemed impossible is very real. That’s just part of the joy of riding the wind, whatever we call it.
