I spent the past 10 days on the north shore of Kauai in a little town called Hanalei (of “Puff the Magic Dragon” fame), where my life went something like this: wake up, go to a morning Bikram class at Yoga Hanalei; drink a double soy latte at Java Kai; swing by the fruit stand for fresh pineapple, papaya and the local “apple” bananas (so sweet they say they taste a little bit like apples); surf, maybe go for a mid-afternoon run during the late-day rain and then surf again until the sun went down. After a few cold beers with lime, I’d giggle my way through a dinner of poki, seaweed salad and grilled ono or mahi.
But the best part of the whole trip was our surf instructor, Mike Rodger.
In my seven years of surfing, I never had the luxury of a surf instructor, never mind one who looks like he materialized from a computer-generated fantasy of the quintessential surfer boy, all blue eyes and sun-bleached hair, skin the color of cinnamon, and an effortlessness that makes everything he does look easy.
He’s one of those people who has all these random skills and talents (lifeguard, boat captain, furniture maker, artist, certified diver). He has a degree in marine biology and outdoor recreation from San Diego State and appears to have a few thoughts that might even extend beyond those big Hawaiian waters.
In addition to surf lessons, Rodger helps run a guiding company, Kauai Ocean Adventures, that offers everything from Polynesian canoe sailing rides and Tahitian drumming to scuba diving, kayaking and guided hiking. (Something tells me that making a living in the islands is not much different than the mountains.)
In essence, he’s a guide, and that’s a service I’ve never really subscribed to. I don’t know if it’s a matter of pride or finances, but in the end I always paid the price by learning the hard way.
My early days of surfing (or most of my days of surfing for that matter) were riddled with disaster, from running my first longboard up on the rocky shores of San Onofre in California and landing on my fin in Costa Rica to suffering head- to-toe reef rash on the North Shore of Oahu.
Mike paced me by first taking me to breaks where I felt safe and could boost my confidence, and then gradually led me into bigger waves that were farther offshore. We’d work our way from the inside, where the waves are smaller, out toward the peak, basically starting out on green runs and graduating to blues as I progressed.
One afternoon when I was feeling particularly frustrated after a series of wipeouts, Mike looked at me intently and said, “It doesn’t matter if you fall. What matters is that you go for it. Every wave is an opportunity to learn something – that’s all that matters.”
I stopped for a moment and just sat on my board, watching the sun set and moon rise. Despite my inability to catch that perfect wave, it was a perfect moment – perhaps one of the most perfect moments I have experienced in a long time.
There’s something about being on the water that takes you away from it all and quiets the mind in a very literal way. All that noise, all those thoughts just fade away when you realize how small you are and how big the ocean is and you actually can sit there and be part of its power. Surfing is analogous to life in so many ways, and the lessons Mike taught me were about more than how to catch waves. I realized it’s OK to fall on your face as long as you’re willing to do it again and give it all you’ve got. It’s also OK to let someone guide you.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
