The ocean cares if you pay attention

Arriving with a weighty 40-pound backpack full of lycra, camera film and crumbling wax. Two weeks prior, we had set out to conquer the autumnal Cornish surf. Equipped with 5mm winter wetsuits, gloves and hats- usually saved for my Christmas surf with my dad, is now being used as a year-round essential for my thinning city skin.

I’ve written before about the joys of exploring the rugged, untouched Cornish landscape and the physical task of developing a skill such as surfing, particularly how it removes me from the hyper-speed of daily life. The tiresome dull ache which becomes irrelevant; now, there is only sand and salt and wind and water. I unwind by the ocean, to be still, as the water passed me by, I know I will come up for air soon enough.

The ocean cares if you pay attention. 

What you learn from moments like this is I am and have to be — completely in the moment, any other way of being has consequences. At best, a wipe out. At worst, a deadly fall.

 The ocean cares if you pay attention.