Surfing Wisconsin

Along with turning thirty came the realization that the dream of living in a quaint surfside shack on the California coast and riding the waves had gone unfulfilled. Not a single finger was lifted in those first 30 years to make that surf life happen, so it was surely a fantasy.

But I wanted to surf. I had never seen a surfboard in real life but had a back yard workshop and a well-stocked beer fridge, and with a little help from some mail order plans, I built a surfboard.  

It almost made perfect sense, as 15 minutes out my back door is that mighty inland sea, Lake Superior. But I had no idea if a surfboard on Lake Superior could work.

An old Beach Boys song instructed me to be waxin’ down my surfboard and it was polished and buffed and waxed until water beaded up upon every square inch but was too slick to ride upon.  An ad in a surfing magazine found in a Yooper newsstand had the phone number for a Huntington Beach, California surf shop, and I called for advice. The salesman asked where my home waves were and what the water temperature was. My reply “Wisconsin, 30 something degrees”, begged his curious follow up, “Celsius”? There was an awkward pause upon my answering, “No, Fahrenheit”.

He then graciously pointed out that wax was applied to the top surface of the board to make it tacky, so the surf rider doesn’t slip off. “You are going to need extreme cold-water wax”, he said matter of fact before launching into a half hour over-the-phone surfing lesson-his due diligence, no doubt meant to keep me out of the obituary page of the Iron County Miner. For years to come, extreme cold-water wax and surf shop stickers magically appeared in my mailbox free of charge, positive reinforcement from afar.

The first noticeable improvement with using board wax was that I didn’t fall off the surfboard all the time. I started to get the hang of it and started to have some fun. But the learning curve to surfing Wisconsin was steep. The waves were not luxurious nor well-spaced like those along the coasts, but were cold, hard, closely spaced, and crashed into the beach. The rides were short and kamikaze like and the endings were barely controlled crashes.

The Beach Boys again disappointed by promising fun-in-the-sun while surfing. If the sun is shining in Wisconsin, the surf ain’t up. The opportunities for the best waves were limited to those knee-to-hip high that built for an hour or two as a storm approached but before the storm’s actual landfall. A storm rolling across Lake Superior is common, but a storm producing those waves is not.

A wicked Nor’easter rolling in would find the fair-weather beach bums hastily collecting their coolers and folding chairs and scampering away toward the parking lot. I did the opposite and scampered, board under arm, toward the building waves.

At first, I told no one about Surfing Wisconsin. And it was not a big secret, driving around in stormy weather with a surfboard sticking out of the back of my vehicle. About a year in people began asking questions and I began to answer, and the idea was met with skepticism, snickers, and rolled eyes. But those folks were stuck on dry ground, and I was out there surfing.

In late March, a big storm was predicted, and the nearshore weather and maritime alerts fired off.

I raced out to Saxon Harbor and was greeted by waves larger than any I’d ever rode before, and they were quickly building to overhead. Those waves came in an unusually orderly fashion and rolled landward in a most graceful form before crumbling into the shoreline, conditions I had not seen before on Lake Superior. In my eyes those waves were monsters and were huge and scared the shit out of me, but this setup had the potential for a best day ever!

It was easy paddling out in the relatively calm water between the break walls of the safe harbor and then entering between two well-spaced waves. The surf gods were smiling, and my board caught an incredible wave that took me on the most exciting ride of a lifetime, a truly other worldly experience. That wave then crumbled harmlessly short of the shoreline, allowing time to collect my board and make a hasty exit up the rugged boulder face.

My second time out, entry was not easy, and the timing was way off. My board awkwardly caught an incoming wave and raced uncontrollably down the face, stalling out at the bottom.

That wave crashed from above and slightly behind causing an abrupt smackdown, grinding my face into the sandy bottom.  Amazingly I surfaced no worse for the wear. But a split second later the board rocketed to surface and struck me in the face. Everything suddenly appeared bathed in white hot light, and I saw stars.

The next moment of realization was of sitting upon a boulder and facing the water, the surfboard still leashed to my ankle and getting battered against the toe of the rip rap by each incoming wave.

A quick wellness check revealed a hole bit through my lower lip and two broken teeth, the right corner of my mouth was torn and that side of my face drooped. My neck was damaged.

Once home, I Superglued my torn face back together. “Thank goodness you made it home”, my former wife sighed, and then quipped, “Imagine telling everyone you drowned on a lake in Wisconsin, surfing!”

For seven more years, I continued to surf Wisconsin, perhaps slightly more cautiously after the wipeout. That old longboard eventually became a mere decoration hanging in the cabin rafters.

And there was never another ride as spectacular as that first ride on the day of the big wipeout.

I thought summoning the courage to enter Lake Superior’s pitching seas and tapping into the awesome power of her waves somehow made me a bad-ass surfer. But it was her making the waves all along, I was merely another piece of flotsam tossed about in just another storm.

And I will never fully comprehend the mercy of her coughing me up, a dreaming fool in over my head during a big storm, then delivering me to the safety of the shore.