By Bill Barlow
In Ocean City at first light, all waves are hypothetical, while my pillow remains palpably, reliably true. Its folds, its subtle combination of yielding and resilience seem far more welcoming than the night before, but in the end, I prove a faithless companion.
I get up.
The preparation takes place in a pre-coffee haze: boards on the car, remember to strap them on or it will be a short trip. You make bleary decisions on wetsuits or vests and whether it’s time to wax, and then on to the beach for dawn patrol.
The phrase invokes the daring flyers trotting through the early mist to their waiting Sopwith biplanes to roar off to danger and adventure, but I suspect surfers picked it up from Snoopy’s World War I Flying Ace invoking the same scene. Anyway, with the rolling sun up at about 5:45 a.m. this time of year, dawn patrol is probably a misnomer. In the fall, fitting in a pre-work surf will often mean getting up in the dark, hitting the water in twilight, and catching the first splash of light as the sun bursts over the horizon. In August, it’s instead shining through low clouds by the time we reach the beach, and we paddle out in full daylight.
We don’t quite have the beach to ourselves. Fishermen get up crazy early, and those guys probably were out on the beach in the dark. There are a few folks surreptitiously running their dogs, but still, things are very quiet on the beach and in the water.
There are a few reasons to paddle out this early. That quiet is one. Another is that the waves are sometimes at their best very early, when there is often a breeze off the land to groom and hold them up before they break. Later in the day, when the lifeguards come on duty to look after everybody, most beaches are closed to surfing. Those that are open, especially guarded beaches set aside for surfers, can get packed. For the pathologically crowd-averse surfer, getting up early can mean a few rides without a lineup, and almost no chance of running into anyone.
And then there’s work.
On busy summer days, an hour in the water can get you a few rides, and cast a nice echo through your day, while still leaving enough time to get in by 8 a.m., after a shower and a hurried breakfast.
Plus, you feel a little like an explorer when you wade in to an empty ocean, pushing through the inside line of breaking waves into the clear green water. There’s often a spray of minnows as you climb that first roller before you find your spot on the outside. Unless you are in one of the very popular breaks, chances are you and your companion are the only human beings in the water for as far as you can see. Osprey and dolphin, also after fish, are also up early, and without the midday crowds, they often hunt in the break, which can mean some pretty spectacular sightings.
The backlit humps of the waves cast a shadow as they are about the break. You paddle, maybe you even miss one, but soon you feel the wave pick up your board, moving it without your help, and you’re on your feet, turning into the clear water, alone and alive and flying low on a foam and fiberglass magic carpet.
Pillow? What pillow? What could another hour or so of dreaming offer compared to this? At the end of the ride, you fall into cool water and turn to head back out.
When it’s time to head home, you still feel like you’re on a very, very brief vacation. That coffee and toast doesn’t seem like an unnoticed, un-savored daily routine, it seems like a reward. Through the day, you feel a little like you have your own secret, like you’ve gotten away with something, albeit something wholesome. You’ve snuck in some fun on a weekday.
OK, sure, sometimes you drag yourself out to find a waveless expanse from the beach to the horizon. Or sometimes, despite a good surf forecast, you get tossed and battered by choppy, closing waves that break everywhere but where you are, and eventually you have to paddle back in, feeling robbed of both sleep and rides.
But those mornings straddling your board, watching the sun climb in the sky, watching the beach rake make the rounds like threshers on a Midwest cornfield, bobbing on the outside while you wait for the next set, can sometimes make you wonder why everyone isn’t out early in the waves.
Wait, scratch that. If everybody believes me and sets their alarm for 5:30 a.m., the next dawn patrol could be a much different scene.
