My
passion to stay with the sea-drummer's beat and play melodies against
the grinding bass of deep ocean swells has taken me from my birthplace
in West Cornwall to discover a spectrum of surfing and cultural challenges.
I embrace these with a geographical imagination educated by the classroom
of Cambridge University and polished by global field trips, often to
politically difficult and culturally complex brilliant corners of the
world.
For me, while exploration is the essence of surfing, I take surfing
beyond the wave, to a wider sense of place - to people in concert with
landscape, and often to varieties of culture shock. I want to travel
to extreme places in the sense of unusual, or out of the way, corners
of coastline to engage with the essence of the place and its inhabitants.
The journey is as important as the goal. But I do not want to conquer
the dark spots on the map. I prefer to think that the sea and travel
shape me, rather than imagining that I stamp my identity on anything.
By approaching new situations with an openness and willingness to learn,
I have come to appreciate that there is a place between acceptance and
confidence that demands poise. All surfers know the feeling of poise.
The trick is how you translate that moment into life as a whole.
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