Night Surfing

I’m about to crawl in bed after just coming in from a surf session. Yes, that’s right, a surf session. I paddled out at 1-ish am after drinking and partying. When else would you I suppose…

I can only liken it to a religious kind of an experience. The Bio-luminescence I spoke of the other day was out in force. And I discovered it’s not just a ‘thing’ that happens, but the waves glowing when they crash is actually the process of millions of individual life forms actually lighting up!!!

As I paddled out into the dead, dark sea,  I was greeted by the first few bio-luminescent plankton critters as they floated up on my board to say ‘Hi, come play in the water with us.
I can’t stress this enough, they are individuals!!! I wanted to name them as they came to see me.

It was a bit creepy paddling out into the darkness, but I had an electrical storm going on over the desert that would light up every few seconds, the bio-luminescence glowing as the waves broke, and a few lights from campers left the bluff outlined.

The waves weren’t actually big enough to ride standing up, so I would belly in on them as far as they would take me. The biggest thrill was to see the bio-luminescent creatures being flung in the air with the spray as I came down the wave, and the board scattered water everywhere.

Because they are individual little beings, one or two would get flung up in the spray particles, and totally light up! And I would just giggle in delight. There really wasn’t more I could do, it was just too awesome.

The tide was super low, so I would end up dragging my fin on the bottom, or the wave would just die out. When the ride was over, I’d just turn out into the blackness and paddle back out again.

While I can’t photograph it, I added a drawing that in no way captures the experience, but gives you an idea of the view from my board staring out to the horizon. The rocks are to the right, and my little glowing friends are in green, floating on top of and around my board.