nustad:surfing:boundaries02
It marks the edge of the land; it marks the end of footprints. The sea is a barrier, a limit to man's activity. Boats must be built and schemes devised before man can continue to occupy the earth beyond this saline line. His time in its wastes is transient and the evidence of its occupation lasts only as long as the ripples he creates take to die away. The surface of this watery void is as monotonous as its state of flux as waves torture its surface. As a man stands on the line that marks the limit of his steps, the barrier that is set before him protests against his approach as waves that the sea can no longer contain exact their assualt. And so it is in this region, it is in the surf, that this man chooses to play his game. It is in this region where the ocean rages against the land that he chooses to play in its fury. He rides the breaking waves in defiance of the boundary laid before him. He is an alien in that liquid turmoil and the sea does not know he is there, he knows that it owes him no kindness and so he respects it, he observes it and tries to understand it, and this is all he takes as he paddles out on his fiberglass board.