There is nothing quite like witnessing the rapture of a toddler waddling into waves for the first time. I expected nothing less from my daughter, who swam inside of me for 10 months and was conceived when my husband and I quit our jobs in journalism in order to literally get on the same wavelength during a baby-making sabbatical, a 14-month road trip down the Pacific coast of the Americas. We named her Nami after the Japanese word for wave, as a nod to her ancestry and a not-too-subtle hint of what we expected her to love. The liminal line where the sidewalk ends in San Francisco, however, is not to be taken lightly.
Ocean Beach is a 3.5-mile stretch of wilds where the Pacific collides with all of the water from the Delta and Bay as it drains under the Golden Gate Bridge. Sediment swirls out of the Gate, mimicking a river mouth, which creates massive sandbars and, on the right days, creates world-class waves. Bill Martin, the legendary KTVU meteorologist, used to quietly place a red dot over the Columbia River Gorge during his 10 o’clock weather report. Surf friends in the know among the then four million greater Bay Area viewers knew that the red dot indicated that high pressure was building, and offshore winds were therefore on the way. “We didn’t care about how big it was or how small it was,” says Martin; “we just wanted to be able to get in the water.” Most of the time, he says, it is the most dangerous beach in the world.
In 1998 Ocean Beach famously claimed the lives of seven people in one year alone. Wave energy born from storms in Japan and the Aleutian Islands grows as it travels across the largest ocean on earth. It eventually slams onto our shores with nothing but the Farallon Islands to block its force. The lifeguards at Ocean Beach will not let you go into the water past your ankles without a wetsuit, flotation device, or swim fins, for good reason. I don’t know a local surfer who hasn’t done a rescue at some point. The waves are so menacing that the Pulitzer-winning writer William Finnegan describes it in Barbarian Days as “impossible, like trying to swim up a waterfall.” Certainly more challenging than my toddler should take on even if her name is Nami.
Still, the draw to the sea is universal. She loved to run into the waves, mouth agape as she sipped the negative ions in the air and shrieked with joy. If Ponyo could run on the water and Moana could make it part, surely she was no different. I knew a rip current could take her out to sea in an instant, so I always plucked her from danger, but one afternoon I thought it was time that she learned for herself about the ocean’s power. I saw her fearlessly charge into the surf and knew full well that it would knock her down. I was inches away, but chose to let her fall before I grabbed her. It was less than a second, but long enough to see the terror in her eyes. For an entire year she refused to go past the dunes. She was still learning to talk, but heard the ocean loud and clear. Her repulsion devastated me.
I have treated a bipolar diagnosis over the last 30 years with a combination of mood meds and talk therapy, but submerging myself in the naturally occurring lithium of the ocean is what I credit most for my mental health. Competitive swimming helped me stay the course when my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was 15. The ocean is both freedom and a connective cocoon. We sweat and cry salt water. That saliva you’re tasting in your mouth right now came from the same collective body of water that all living things on this planet have shared and recycled for as long as there’s been life on earth. The ocean lives within each and every one of us. Our bodies, like our planet, are mostly water, so it should come as no surprise that my mind and body feel at equilibrium with the sea.
For 24 years I have swum, surfed, and photographed the waves from Ocean Beach to Mavericks on days when their heights reach up to 60 feet on the face. This ritual of surrender, and the practice of finding beauty and magic in the dangerous unknown through the lens of my camera, has been my salvation. The ocean gave me the strength to get tested to see if I had the same BRCA1 gene as my mother, and when I tested positive, the ocean gave me the physical and mental strength to get a double mastectomy and total hysterectomy. When doctors found a 2-millimeter tumor growing in my fallopian tubes, the ocean gave me life when chemotherapy sucked it out of me.
I am not your stereotypical mystical Bay Area hippie, but I definitely feel what the Hawaiians call “mana” every time I touch the water of our uniquely cold and treacherous coastline. Even a quick cold plunge connects me to the energy of our ancestors and the life the ocean supports.
On a clear day you can see spouts of gray, humpback, and blue whales with your naked eye just offshore. Despite living in a city of nearly a million people, I routinely experience the intimacy of a pelican’s prehistoric stare as it flies within inches of my head as I sit in the dunes or on my surfboard in the water. I have seen a baby salmon shark jump next to my surfboard and dove through a school of harbor porpoises as they surfed past me.
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This piece of our shared human heritage should belong to everyone. Yet though the ocean doesn’t discriminate, people often have. A few years ago Bianca Valenti, a big wave surfer and Ocean Beach regular, joined forces with three other wahine big wave surfers to use California coastal law, which protects equal access to the coast, to lobby for a women’s heat and equal pay at the annual Mavericks contest. This catalyzed equal pay in the World Surf League and in 2018, it became the first U.S.-based sports league to pay women and men equal prize money.
Several Bay Area programs work to introduce the ocean to people who historically haven’t had access. City Surf Program Director Troy Bohanon moved from his hometown of Stockton to San Francisco to pursue an Africana Studies degree at S.F. State, but his real motivation was to learn how to surf. He saw City Surf on Instagram and thought “it was really cool seeing people who looked like me.” As a Black man whose mother is from Ethiopia, he has experienced the glares of the old guard even though he’s been a lifelong swimmer. But he quickly realized that summers in the city are cold and outdoor water recreation is not as ubiquitous as it was in the swimming pools of the Central Valley. So City Surf takes students to Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, where the horseshoe-shaped coast gives shelter from the wind and swell, and waves are more consistent. Bohanon tries not to allow quite the same terror in his students as I did with my Nami. The first lesson is to learn how to put on a 5.4-millimeter wetsuit and float in knee-deep water. He teaches students to stay calm if they are tossed around, and he tells them to count down while they are under. They are usually reassured when it is no longer than two to three seconds. He reminds them that a flotation device and coach are always an arm’s distance away. “I’ll often hear, ‘I just drowned!’” to which he replies, “Really? You’re just talking to me right now.”
I witnessed the power of this program firsthand when I assigned my video journalism students, who are also primarily first-generation college students of color, to produce video profiles of the City Surf kids. For many it was their first time to the beach despite growing up in the Bay Area. Slowly but surely all including even the most defiant among them eventually took off their shoes and let the ocean touch their toes. A calm visibly enveloped their bodies and a knowing smile of joy lit up their faces.
No matter whether it’s a first time or a thousandth, ocean immersion lets us share that calm and joy. I introduced Nami to cold and danger at Ocean Beach, yes, but also to a life-defining relationship. She’s now 11 years old, and while she doesn’t remember my questionable parenting call to let a wave knock her down, she knows the ocean. She’s about to start her third year as a junior lifeguard in Half Moon Bay and has ample knowledge to paddle out on a surfboard and swim on small-wave days. She overcame her fear—perhaps in a similar way we can repair our societal relationship with the ocean.
Our Pacific can be cold and treacherous. Most of the time the gray fog never lifts, the wind sweeps sand that cuts into your skin and burns your eyes, and the ocean looks like an angry albeit glorious episode of Victory at Sea. Yet on the best of days Nami and I build sandcastles under the sun, ride boogie boards down the sand dunes like snow sleds, and splash in tidepools. Back when crab pots were still legal we’d paddle them out past the lineup on our surfboards, surf for a few hours with friends, and then gather our bounty from the Bay to feast on at night. It is my favorite place on earth.
Near the end of summer, Nami and I spent a weekend surfing and body surfing at Ocean Beach. Watching her squeal with joy as she rode wave after wave, I realized it’s not just my favorite place—it’s becoming hers as well.
How to Catch a Wave
A number of Bay Area programs work to engage historically underrepresented people with the ocean and diversify surf lineups.
The San Francisco–based nonprofit City Surf has led more than 2,500 youth to the water through an innovative partnership with San Francisco Unified School District high schools. There’s no requirement students know how to swim to participate, and students can opt to surf to meet a physical education requirement.
The woman-owned surf shop Traveler Surf Club in Pacifica is one of several surf shops in the area that offer beginner lessons where a board and wetsuit are provided.
The Surfrider Foundation has local chapters in Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz counties. Each organizes events including beach cleanups, water quality monitoring, and ocean education.
The MeWater Foundation offers free day, week, and overnight surf camps for underserved youth in Marin County and San Francisco, with an emphasis on the ocean’s benefits for mental health.
Queer Surf offers lessons, camps, ocean exploring events, coaching and clinics throughout California, all with the mission of expanding surf culture, and supporting queer wellness.
Black Surf Santa Cruz offers a range of free events to connect people of all ages from Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities to the ocean, including kayaking, whale watching, and a variety of surf programs throughout Santa Cruz County.
Salted Roots Surf, formerly Brown Girl Surf, offers “newbie” surf programs, community surf days, and youth summer camps throughout the Bay Area, including East Bay programs in Alameda.
