The Sea Urchin’s Magic (part 2)

by Emilie Marx
(PART 2/2)

I usually know my limits pretty good and it had been a fair while I hadn’t felt that horrible knot in my guts.
Last time I thought I wouldn’t survive a wipe out was in Sydney, couple of years ago.
On a big day, I accidentally got caught in a rip and found myself at the line up. With a seven feet Malibu in four metre swell….
I still remember the look of the guys when they suddenly saw me next to them. I had no idea what I was doing there, neither did them!
As I looked at them astounded, they all started paddling at the back.
I looked at the horizon and saw this monster wave forming.
It was one of these moments where the only thing one can think is: “shit, shit, shit”.
I followed the surfers, trying to escape the gigantic wall of water that was heading towards us…
I remember thinking “You can not let that one break before you, you just can’t….”
Paddling, paddling; feeling the lip breaking at my board’s tail…. That half second of relief –I’m alive!-, before feeling my heart beat down in my toes again, as the next wall of water would appear….
I passed each wave thanking the sky to have made it while fearing to discover what was coming behind it…

Sydney’s winter swell. Photo taken in August 2006

I eventually made it back to the shore that day (alive, obviously), but I was really close to beg one of the guys to take me back in….

Thing is, when that set came in at Wilderness the other day, I was alone in the water: I had no one to ask to “Please, take me out of this hell (or may be kill me now, but do something!!!)”
Big moment of loneliness…
Just like I did that day in Sydney, I paddled, paddled, paddled.
For each wave I was managing to pass, a bigger one was following.
I have no idea how long I was out there, paddling on moving mountains of water, but it seemed to last for ever. I was stuck at the back, wondering how to get out of this nightmare when I eventually saw that “tiny” wave coming towards me.
It actually wasn’t “small”, but so much smaller than the other ones it looked ridiculous….
I thought: “If there’s got to be one, this is it….”
It still looked enormous to me. “Don’t think and paddle”…
I paddled.
I heard the wave starting breaking behind me, felt the tail of my board lifting: the dice were rolled…
I went down that wave so damn fast I nearly stuffed it up.
Here I was, puppet standing on one feet on a speeding board, down a face much taller than me… It looked gone and over with for half a second… I was gonna get the biggest wipe out ever….
That’s when my second foot had the wonderful idea to get back down on the board…

I did it!
I caught my one wave of the day.

And Thierry was there to immortalize this moment!

It turned out to be the biggest wave I ever caught and I never thought I’d ever ride something that size….
I didn’t push it tho: I had had enough adrenalin to last me for a month!
I made it back to the shore –as fast as I could!
I got out of the water feeling my heart beat in my head and a whole new school of urchins spikes in my feet…. These buggers again!
Yes, and my biggest wave ever caught….
That’s when I polished my theory about the improvement induced by urchins.
Coincidence or not, each time I get some, I manage to push things to the next level….
So may be sea urchins do make one improve…. As some sort of compensation for the inconvenience!
I left wilderness walking on tippy-toe, humbled by the experience …

As the result of my scary session, my neighbours kept on dealing with the swearing few more days….
I then had a beautiful exhibition of urchins spikes: bits put together, I had no less than five centimetres! I found that quite impressive…
Then the wind picked back up, which brought to an end my urchin nightmare.
I mean, nearly….

The original blisters had just healed, I had finally extracted most of the spikes, the coral cuts were healing too, my feet were just starting to look like the ones of a human being again, when I had a beautiful wipe out.
It was while wave riding on top of an extremely shallow reef… (As I’ve said in my first Interview, “when I get hurt, I usually know why”….)

Half of the incident was to be blamed on me (looking up thinking: “But what on earth is my kite doing there?”).
The other half was to be blamed on “shit happens” (“And why is my kite folding in half up in the air?!”).
As the kite crashed twisted on itself in the weirdest manner, the bar got caught in a coral head. Here I was, still in the washing machine, pulled above a reef twenty centimetres below the surface at its deepest. That’s when my kite thought it would be clever to catch power, still folded in half, with the lines caught up somewhere upwind from me…
It must have looked quite messy and it wasn’t exactly an enjoyable moment from my end.
What got me out of this was kiting brotherhood…
I could have got really hurt if a friend hadn’t been there to take the right decision at the right time.
While the kite had gone back down, the hero of the moment managed to deflate it (wisely closing back the valve after having done so). It allowed me to untangle my lines and my bar, and drift, firstly above the reef, then safely back to the shore (proof that there are times where one blesses on shore wind!).
I got out of it amazed not to spot any blood anywhere.
Even more amazed to realize Mother Nature had had some mercy for my feet this time: I could only spot couple of sea urchins there…
Instead, I got the others in my fingers and my knee (and I only have one thing to say about it: “ouch”)…
There’s a first for everything….

Fully used to my limping silhouette after an encounter with the reef –or fade up to see me doing funky yoga in my living room- my neighbour didn’t deal with any swearing this time: he held the tweezers himself…

Still…. In spite of my bad luck, the sea urchin’s magic occurred again: I bizarrely landed two new tricks the next day…
Smoothly, like if I had done them hundred times before…
Uh???

Now, I nearly look forward stepping on sea urchins: “Cool, I’m gonna do something new today!”.

Okay, I will happily admit that my sea urchin theory is pure fantasy… Unless…
Unless we got very special sea urchins here in Saint Martin!
And as there’s no real way to find out, it allows me to give the benefit of the doubt….
Magical thinking doesn’t hurt, does it?
-Well, in this particular case, I guess it does, lol-

I want to finish my story with an anecdote that made me smile.
We’ve been blessed with amazing kiting conditions for the past weeks. It came as a gift after the two months of bad wind we had just gone through.
It’s truly been the best time I’ve had since I got here.
I was surrounded by wonderful people and we’ve shared awesome sessions. It was the perfect combo of great wind, waves and people (and that’s really the best).
I was in heaven.
One night that I was working last week, a regular approached me. He came real close, like if he was about to ask me something he didn’t want the surrounding customers to hear:
“May I ask you something?”
“Sure” I said. Not being sure at all of what to expect!
It was like turning the fortune wheel, having no clue what would possibly come out of his mouth. Still, I was expecting about anything but what he asked me:
“Are you in love?”
I opened my eyes wide. In love?
I laughed. Where did that possibly come from?
“Nope…” I said
He looked almost disappointed!
He added: “But you’ve been looking so happy and smiling these past weeks…. What’s happening?”
And that made me smile so much!
Again. Because it’s true I’ve been smiling a lot lately.

I must have been looking like I wasn’t fully there these past days…
Always with that blissful smile on my face. He must have caught me red handed while I was cleaning a table, my eyes lost somewhere…
Yeah, I must have looked like I was having some sort of steamy affair…
Which, to a certain extend, isn’t that far off from the truth…lol
“It’s been “on”…” I explained. “We hadn’t had any decent wind in two months…”
I suppose the “after session high” is something only a fellow adrenalin junkie can recognize…

So I guess that’s just the way it is: the wind is back and I look in love…

Interesting!
May be my next issue will be: “Who needs a lover when it’s windy?”…
:)

Emilie Marx
20.12.08
Photos of the Gallion and Wilderness by Thierry Dehove.

PS: Note to the reader: no sea urchins were willingly hurt in this story! :)

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