It’d be way too damn easy to choose Craig Kelly, Gerry Lopez, or some other archetypal soul-surfer-type to learn from and hang out with. But let’s be honest: In the water I’d never keep up with them, and out of the water I’d be so starstruck that I’d be to busy yattering like a fool trying to impress that there would be no real learning.
No, I’d prefer to bring a non-surfer. Someone who has never even considered the possibility of the concept of riding a pulse of energy across time and space. But still someone who would still intuitively get it. A complete newb, but not a kook.
I’m thinking something along the lines of a pre-contact inhabitant of turtle island. Someone who is very much in touch with the way energy ebbs and flows through life; someone who is backed by an existence earned from a lifetime of feeling the rhythm of the seasons; someone who has the appropriate degree of calm-mindedness required to break a wild horse and ride it bareback.
I’d imagine that databank of sensitivity to sensory input and skilled observation, properly sped up and applied to water, would result in an uncanny knack for knowing the proper trim required to pull into a barrel, to make the drop and rail a solid bottom turn to set up for the upcoming section. To play witness to this would be the greatest thrill of all – like seeing the evolution of surf from the early Polynesians taking a shortcut in from fishing to today’s big-wave tow-in lunatics. In the span of a week. To play a role in the genesis of this t’would be a helluva thing.