"Surfing is about being one with the ocean, about sharing this amazing resource," Healion tells us later as we sit around a table in the open-air dining area. "Every wave that makes it to shore started with a disturbance -- wind or something else -- hundreds or thousands of miles away" (a principle writ huge by the Dec. 26 tsunami). "When that wave is coming at you, getting ready to break, you have to appreciate what it took for it to get here and how incredible that is."
His talismanic surf sermons might seem hokey, except that he seems so enthusiastically to believe every word of them. And he's a damn good surfer.
Students at an island surf camp get their feet wet in Panama waves.
(John Briley)
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We each grab a 9-foot-3-inch surfboard and walk down to a mile-long crescent of caramel beach. En route, just beyond camp, we pass a thatched hut and a handful of locals, chickens and scrawny dogs. The beach is otherwise empty of people -- just a wide arc of sand between the ocean and the dense jungle.
A pack of rookies is unusual for Morro Negrito, but Healion is patient with us, probably because the swell is down (we have come in late November, after big-wave season). He shows us on shore how to pop up on a surfboard from the prone to standing position -- perhaps the most critical of the sport's many maddeningly exact mechanics -- and we practice on the sand before heading into the water.
Healion joins us, standing in the waist-deep water without his board and shouting instructions as we struggle and wobble and occasionally make it to our feet, teetering briefly before spastically windmilling our arms and plunking into the sea.
But with each attempt I am gaining the crucial skill of wiping out without cracking myself on the stick and, by the end of the session, I am getting to my feet consistently enough that Healion suggests, for the next day's surfing, that I move to a shorter board -- a greater challenge than a long board for wave riding, but less cumbersome to paddle and maneuver.
That night, we dine on wahoo, rice and cabbage salad. Healion skips the fish and serves himself a helping of Gerber baby food -- "pure protein," he says, that's "great for vegans" -- and advises us to get a good night's sleep. After a couple of beers on the balcony beneath a dizzying blitz of stars, we are out by 9, eased to sleep by the washing of waves over rock.
The Long, Lovely Wait
The next morning, we take a ponga -- a crudely constructed 25-foot wood and fiberglass boat with a 40-horsepower outboard -- to a cove with those moss-draped spires, which stand like oblong sentries before a buttery sliver of beach. A steep hill thick with palms, ferns and lianas rises above the sand. Elevating the scene even further is a trio of pelicans, their white feathers and yellow beaks radiant as they soar against the surrounding greenery.
I am thankful for the diversion because on the shorter board, I feel even more inept in the water than I did the day before. Watching Healion catch waves at will, I wonder if I'll ever reach that plane without ditching my job for a surf camp.
I remind myself this pursuit will take time, and that life's richer rewards require dedication. I came here to learn to surf, a goal that, at age 38, I felt slipping away: The sport mandates balance, lung capacity, neuromuscular response and free time, all of which diminish with advancing middle age.
