A Littoral logbook, from the Introduction to ‘Surfing Spaces‘ (Anderson, 2023).

Ever since I was a child, and my mother took the family on Sunday drives for what seemed like hours to the coast, it had me. In my naivety, it seemed a long way to go just to get open sky and ice cream. But the journey, the arrival, and the presence of the waves came to matter more to me than the satiation of a sweet tooth. Since then, I have been drawn to the edge of things. I have been hungry for places where the sea, land, and air meet. I love these places, I love this… space. I agree with Camus when he said, “the heart of royal happiness’ can be found here (2013: 10). I don’t know if my Mum had read Melville, but now I’d wager she fully recognised his urge. Indeed, “a damp, drizzly November in my soul” develops whenever I imagine a world where myself and others are barred from the waves; where we are only allowed to stand on the beach, just this side of the swash and tideline, just this side of the surf. Imagine the exile.

Now, barefoot, I stand here. Watching, then walking, to the water’s edge. But this is not just the water’s edge. It is the edge of exposed land, the end of (one sort of) culture, and a frontier to a new world. My feet stand, sinking slightly. The sand moves, becomes suspended, stalls, and falls across my toes. My calves are now immersed, with strands of kelp swaying; still; gently brushing my skin. I face the curved horizon, with an exultant off-shore wind lifting my hair and whooshing my ears. Here, at the end of the land, the beginning of the sea, and the cusp of the air, I am at the join, the merger, the specific contact zone where these disparate elements meet and wrestle each other. The intensity of union is such that the modern distinction between these elements simply doesn’t matter anymore. To paraphrase Whitman (2003), this feels like a place of “original energy’, and I am “mad” for immersion within it.

I take one step, two; the water laps my midriff. For now at least, I fight every fibre that tempts me to duck dive, float and drift; to give myself up to the currents and tides. Still standing, I watch the shadows on the sea. My heart lifts. The waves are coming. Walls of water, born from the winds out there, memories of sun-driven squalls long died. The sand beneath my feet now mingles round rocks. It is these rapid shallows, this disappearing depth, which draws in the rising dark. The waves rise, form ramparts, yards from me. I dive into their roots. Into the who knows where, the here and there, the then and now. Surface and depth, far and near, past and future, it all flows round and through me, connecting together in this momentary place. I twist, I turn. Combined energy lifts me to its surface; its last visible act takes me home. Then it is gone. This is the littoral territory, the littoral scape; it is the original space of surf and surf-riding.

‘Surfing Spaces’ is a research monograph published through Routledge. The following pages contains links which support the narrative on surf media (Surfer covers and posters) and gender Gender Codes .