Let's talk about sharky

the existence of sharks implies the existence of dolphins

there be sharks here

First of all, the plug: I had a piece out in The New Republic last week about the palace intrigue coverage of the Trump White House. Kind of a look-ahead piece, but a fun one. Easy to get through. Give it a click if you don’t hate me.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, maybe a month or so now, I was surfing this break in Oregon where they have sharks. And I don’t mean they have sharks, because every break has sharks. I mean they have sharks.

So, we get to Oregon and I had to rent a board. Katie wouldn’t let me bring any of my own boards on the plane. Which, hard to blame her, we were switching coasts with a two-year-old and he’s essentially a screaming piece of luggage with an insatiable desire for escape. Hard to tote a seven-foot surfboard with a runaway banshee in your care.

We land without incident and drive along a Pacific Northwest road. I get to the surf shop and they have this board that I’ve been slobbering over for years, a 7’4 twin-fin fish, and I know that means nothing to most of you, but it’s basically just a fast surfboard that you can do smooth lines on. Carve like you’re painting the wave. And I loved it. But the whole time, I’ve got that thought in the back of my head — there are sharks here. Some shark chomped a surfer, at this exact spot, three years ago. I knew that.

But I never felt it. There’s this thing, rarely but occasionally, you’ll talk about a spot, and say it feels sharky. I suppose we have this instinct in us, as humans, as animals. We know when a predator is around. It’s only happened to me twice. Like, only twice have I looked around, and said, nah, too sharky, time to paddle in. Both times occurred within a stagnant period of several months when I was a beach bum in the Outer Banks and the sharks bit something like twelve people. You’d see the helicopters passing overhead, a few-hundred-feet above the ocean and say, oh shit, they got another one.

I remember the first time, for what it’s worth. The day before, I’d seen a bull shark in the waves, I was sitting on the beach and I saw it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a bull shark but, in the water, they look like fat torpedos. Great Whites are slender in the water, so are Threshers, bull sharks are not. A male bull shark has the highest testosterone of any animal currently crawling the earth. They look, well they like bulls. Like torpedo bulls. So, the day after I saw the shark, we’re out surfing knee-high waves in the rain and I keep feeling something beneath me. Kind of the same feeling you get when you feel somebody watching you. I don’t actually know if there was anything there. But I’d rather go to the shore over a vibe than the hospital over a bite.

The other time, we were out swimming — me and a few buddies and a new kid. And this time, it wasn't particularly sharky, but I looked down and felt something and said (mostly to the new kid to freak him out), don’t look down but something real big just swam underneath us. And then, well, fuck it, I saw something. Probably nothing, but it wasn’t a dolphin and it wasn’t seaweed. And it wasn’t a cloud’s shadow.

And then last week, I had this wild experience. I was surfing in my usual spot and there were only about half-a-dozen guys out. But the waves are picking up. Not huge. But they’re head-high. I caught one, a nice little left-hand ride with a bit of air at the end. And the other guys — all the other surfers — are whooping with ecstasy and obviously it’s not for me. There’s a pod of dolphins in the waves and they’re riding alongside the surfers. This is actually pretty common. It’s not on video a lot, but it does happen a good bit.

And they were everywhere. They rode a wave with me, two of them jumping, side-by-side, and god, I felt damn-near transcendental. Had to kind of calm myself when I got offam the wave.

But the point, what I took from it, is paddle out. Paddle out because there might be sharks but there might be dolphins.

Sure, you’re getting to the end of this thing and I’ve just murdered it with a cheap metaphor, but a cheap metaphor sticks, doesn’t it? A cheap metaphor is accessible — a bit of knowledge jammed into a bumper sticker.¹ As I paddled out the dolphins were jumping around in the clear green water. I thought, adversely, the world is sharky. But that doesn’t negate the existence of dolphins.²

The whole thing makes me think of that Ada Limon poem, the beautiful one from several years ago, called Sharks in the Rivers. I love that poem, here’s a bit of it.

I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks. 
  
How I thought I saw them in the creek 
across from my street. 
  
I once watched for them, holding a bundle 
of rattlesnake grass in my hand, 
shaking like a weak-leaf girl. 
  
She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says, 
  
Sharks bite fewer people each year than 
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records. 
  
Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks. 

1. I seem to remember the cheap metaphors more than anything else, at least from Nietzsche (build your home on the slopes of Vesuvius) and Marcus Aurelius (dream of the stars and see yourself running through them). Maybe I’m just lame.

2. P.S. — I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the video of Mick Fanning fighting off a shark, but it’s wild.