Dec-2014
Seasons of Life and Surfing
The winter season offers us such a different life and surfing experience than what we know in the summer months, especially along the North Oregon coast. Summer is the high energy season filled with sunshine, warm days and nights, small and fun surfing conditions, and offshore NW flow that make our favorite sandbars south of here pop up. It’s also the time that I as a surf coach and surfing event director create and work my most diligently, being available to all the people who have the passion to learn surfing over these ideal months. On the opposite end of the seasons, winter’s shortened days with little sunlight, wild Pacific storms that rush in with unrelenting rain and winds, huge ocean swells that sometimes appear the white water is breaking out past the horizon, make it a time to surrender and go within. To go within your homes and safe abode to stay warm, dry and find shelter, but also a sweet invitation to go within ourselves. This season of winter, allows me the quiet solitude and peaceful reflective time to listen to my inner desires and possibilities, which I may want to create. It brings me the space to be open to all that is possible in my life. In this off season of surf coaching, I refill my energy (prana) with the added rest and rejuvenation I need to blossom fully in the late spring and summer months ahead.
Many years ago, when I was in my 30’s my younger sister, Zoe, saw how stressful my year round life had become. She noticed how I never changed my loaded schedule or the demands that were on me. And how I was always trying to operate at the same high energy level year round, with no adjustment or slow down. Zoe encouraged me, back then, to live like Nature’s seasons; to embrace each unique season and its offerings. Winter she reminded me is the time that plants, insects, birds, and animals slow down, sometimes hibernating, to conserve their warmth, energy and life essence. We as humans have the same natural need as the rest of the living beings on the planet. With this thoughtful advice, I began to address this natural propensity for personal balance tied to Nature’s seasonal change.
Now years later, I so enjoy the changes of the seasons; winter’s stillness, spring’s awakening, summer’s fruition and fall’s composting. They help me to set my intentions and place my attention and focus on the places and surfing needs I most desire. So now in the midst of late fall and winter’s solstice nearly here, I enjoy the balance of hours of yoga and meditation each week, reading spiritually enlightened authors, having time by the woodstove with my husband enjoying a savory meal together, yet still keeping my close eye on the ocean each day, waiting for those sweet little gem sessions that can still appear in December to surf. #surfing #OregonCoast Oregon Surf Camp
comment this post