I found my red cowboy boots

A lot of good energy seemed to swirl around after that surf, I felt unstoppable, like I was right on track. A few days later during the same run of swell as the one I last wrote about I was pushing myself and feeling bold. It was just two of us who had paddled out at a new beach for the first time, it was big and messy. A bit complacent and overconfident, sitting a little on the inside we were caught by a set much bigger than the rest. It showed up against the horizon like a big angry inescapable wall, on a beach break there’s nowhere to run. As the first wave broke in front of us we both ditched our boards and tried to swim under it. My friend was pushed to the inside, closer to the beach, but I had been sitting a little further out than him and caught in a weird place I kept paddling seaward in an attempt to make it over the set. I was going to make it over the second wave and I felt temporary relief as paddled up the face. I then saw the third wave, and my relief vanished, they just kept getting bigger. The third broke just a couple feet in front of me - which is almost the worst place to be. It rag dolled me around for a bit before pushing me to what felt quite deep. I had already started panicking a bit while trying to paddle out, and wasn’t really setting myself up to stay calm under the water and hang onto my breath (rookie mistake), it was more than I was expecting to experience that day. While under, I sensed turmoil at the surface and was in a panic trying to get my bearings and swim up. Frazzled by my tossing I was hurriedly swimming, and swimming, and swimming. I shouldn’t have been swimming for that long and realized that I had no idea where I was and was probably swimming down, or sideways. It was very dark. I felt myself running out of air and realized that the only thing to do was to relax (which felt very counter intuitive). Once I did finally relax, it started to let me up and as I neared the surface everything around me became brighter but the air had been expelled from my lungs for a bit longer than comfortable and I forcibly inhaled. My throat felt tight and constricted, I felt pressure in my chest. It was the first time I’ve taken in water like that, and when I hit the surface and opened my eyes all I saw was a bright white. A cough and a gasp to inhale before another wave broke on me. Thankfully, there was a lot of white water already which helped keep me near the surface so this wave just tumbled me around without plunging me deep like the last. I scrambled for my board for a bit in an attempt to paddle in, the set seemed to be never-ending.

Realistically looking back, I probably wasn’t under for that long, but it was certainly my worst hold-down to date. It was a learning experience for sure, and its part of learning to surf bigger waves. The ocean is my most humbling teacher.

I was determined to not let it phase me or spook my surfing, I was never actually fearful of the ocean beforehand. But it did, it shook me in more ways than I would have expected. In general my confidence was shaken, an air of anxiety and unease hung around and I unconsciously began to cling to it. December became a very introspective month. The weather had really dropped to where it almost felt like winter back in Tofino, which meant a lot of time inside. I helped Ashley but otherwise didn’t have anything going on in my life apart from my surfing motivations which now felt distant and subdued. I’d also come down with dreams about becoming a writer and cataloguing this journey but I hadn’t yet started, and I felt guilty about that and afraid of failure. All of my dreams felt shaken and intangible. I floated around in an anxious space for about a week, I was lost.

I woke one day feeling scattered, just like every other day preceding it. I can’t remember what I was doing that day otherwise, but I had decided to stop in at my favourite thrift store on the west side of town. Upon walking in, I spotted a pair of red cowboy boots. They were the first pair I’d seen and I had been looking since I crossed the border, I’d thrifted down the entire coastline and even kept an eye out for them on online market places. Before I’d found them I didn’t know if they’d show up as a tangible object, I’d wondered if they’d appear in an art form or in something I was reading. I hadn’t happened upon a pair at all. I rushed over and immediately slipped them on, they were a beautiful deep red with sharp white stitching and a pointed toe. They fit perfectly.

Within the span of a week I had been in my first barrel, thought I’d nearly drown, and found my mystical boots, carrying a significance that I didn’t fully understand. Finding them shifted something internally, I wasn’t sure how or what exactly, but for a moment I felt very present in my body, at home within myself. Something I hadn’t felt recently. Afterwards, I began to really go inward. I started writing poetry which was surprising, it was never a medium that I’d really felt drawn to. I didn’t read poetry and I’d only written one poem before - the one detailing my motivations to find these boots (I want to get red cowboy boots), which I didn’t even realize was a poem at the time. It began spewing out of me, you can read it here if you wish. I think some of the poems I wrote during this period offer insight into the feelings of malaise and suppression that I felt. The rain and cold weather gnawed away at me, it settled in my body and weighed me down. All I desired was to wrap up inside myself and hide from it, most things felt grey. This was a very internal period of time and was challenging to write about. I dreaded writing about it, I still dread my feelings from this period of time.

I continued to wrestle with anxiety, and in my introspection and internal solitude I got very into the concept and idea of cycles; that with the process of life there exists continuous cycles of life and death, regressions and expansions. From my journal:

some times I am on top of the world
some times I am beneath the bottom and it is so mucky down here

we succumb to
regressions and deaths
to shed what no longer serves

to allow for that which grows
progressions and rebirth
cycles and loops

I guess after checking off some goals encapsulated within this weird American Dream that I’d unconsciously created, I was still feeling unfulfilled and had clearer direction than what I’d left Canada with. I couldn’t grasp the clarity I’d hoped to find entangled with this journey and my red cowboy boots. I’d thought that my boots would offer some sort of divine sign - now I see that they did, but at the time I couldn’t understand it. They had asked me to come back to myself, something I was struggling to do. Everything just felt foggy and unclear, instead of sitting with it all I was asking “now what?”

I foresaw myself spending the rest of the winter in Santa Cruz because I’d decided that I had no other option. What if I take off in the van and the transmission blows? I’d have to go home, or borrow money, likely both. Both of which felt like failures. I was trying to be self sufficient and make something happen, remember? I also didn’t really have anything to go home to at the time, and I dreaded the cold. I was determined to have a warm surfing winter. Also, don’t get me wrong I really do love Santa Cruz, the pockets of it, places and people I found that resonated deeply with me. I had connected with some really lovely people, and had lots of kindness extended to me in my stay there. I’m grateful for my period of time there, but a cold weather winter in the van wasn’t the easiest and I was still longing for something that I was struggling to find here.

I felt as though leading up to this point there had been lots of expansion, so much had happened within the last couple months, so much newness and intensity. I concluded that it had all reached a climax, and I was now in the depressed, or death phase in the cycle of happenings. One that calls for lack of outward expansion, and rather more introspection. I felt deeply lonely in this month, something I realize even more so now. I hadn’t made close friends with anyone in a similar situation or phase of life. I was a traveler yearning to connect with others in the same mode, but I was stuck in a bubble I had created. I wanted to go and be free, but again fear had taken over. I was going to lug that Transmission Paranoia around until I couldn’t bear it any longer. I was holding on so tight to the small points of concreteness that I had crafted within my life in Santa Cruz because I was resistant to the shift that this new phase was calling for. It just wasn’t the right place for me to be any longer, I can’t really explain why aside from the fact that it didn’t feel right. But I wouldn’t let go. Trying to make it all work when it doesn’t feel like its working, like forcing square peg into a round hole.

We often hold on the tightest before we let go.

It was reminiscent of feelings I had about leaving Canada as I drug my feet on the way out, except this time the feelings were darker and stickier. Being out of it, I’m reminded that the bottom is a jumping off point to go back up, it’s a cycle after all. More expansion and life come after the regression and slump.

January came and was forecasting a month of rain and storms, long periods of rain suck in the van, especially if it’s cold. You are always cold and wet. One night I dreamt about 5 cyclones hitting Santa Cruz in a row, it was vivid and intense as I watched the storms roll in one after another on a colorful weather map drawn up by my subconscious. It was a panicky and restless feeling dream.

Good friends are honest with you. The morning following my dream we sat across from one another drinking coffee as rain tapped against the windows, a fog clinging to the world outside. It was dark in the early morning, our surroundings inside lit by a small lamp emitting a warm hue. H looked at me and said “I think you’re going crazy here.”

He was right.

And so I let go. And I went. I had already started planning it the night before.

Soon I found myself encapsulated by the endless rolling hills of the Santa Ynez valley set ablaze a brilliant emerald green from the heavy rains that had been awash over California. I felt like I was seeing colour again for the first time.

People were calling the storm that was hitting California a “10 year swell” as the days rolled on it jumped to a “35 year swell,” some boasted a “50 year swell!” It was a big storm that hit, and it lit up the coastline as I flew down it. Scared of the rain, like it was chasing me.

He’d said I’d feel better once I got out of the Salinas valley, he was right.

It doesn’t all have to be good for it to beautiful.