Bolinas doesn’t want you to find it. The locals keep tearing down the highway signs, a middle finger to the hordes from San Francisco who’d otherwise choke this place with their Range Rovers and organic kombucha stands. It’s deliberate, this obscurity. And
I respect the hell out of it.
You wake up at five-thirty. It’s dark. It’s always dark. The cold hits you like a slap from an ex-girlfriend who’s decided you’re not worth the energy anymore. But you go anyway, because you’re an idiot, because something in your reptile brain insists that paddling into frigid Pacific water while normal people are still asleep is somehow a reasonable life choice.
The drive down that narrow road feels like entering another dimension. Mist hangs over everything like the place is still deciding whether to fully materialize. The beach parking lot is dirt and gravel, no frills, no pretense. A few beat-up trucks, boards strapped to roofs. These aren’t tech bros doing their wellness routine. These are people who need this.
I did not consider, even passingly, that I had a choice when it came to surfing. My enchantment would take me where it would.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
The paddle-out is baptism and punishment in equal measure. Your hands go numb. Your chest tightens. The wetsuit feels like a cruel joke. But then there’s that moment. That first sit on the board, bobbing in the lineup, watching the horizon turn from black to gunmetal to that impossible violet-orange that makes you understand why people write bad poetry. Why I write this.
It’s stupid and sublime. You’re freezing, probably slightly hypothermic, muscles screaming. But you’re also more present than you’ve been in months. No phone. No email. Just you and the ocean’s indifference, which is somehow the most honest relationship you have.
Finnegan is right. There’s no choice here. Just surrender.