The water between the waves is static. Flickering and jagged, it’s as if hundreds of sharpened elbows are jabbing ruthlessly at the salty air before each swell erupts in a cascade of foam, leaving the surface behind for a mere moment, peacefully blank. A flock of silhouetted gulls fly in a lopsided V, their backs grazing the bellies of bloated rainclouds that hang heavy in the sky, blotting out the morning sun. Bobbing helplessly in the distance, a lone buoy whistles forlornly across the surf.
Obscured by mist, far-off cliffs jut unforgivingly out into the water while coastal evergreens perch precariously along their rocky edges. Due to enduring years of abuse by heavy winds, the trees have been blown inland, giving them the appearance of leaning away from the cliff edge and the agitated waves below.
The Oregon Coast is unpredictable. Today, the air is mostly calm, though only a few hours earlier, gusts of wind blew frigid raid sideways, and the waves unraveled into a discernable mass of swirling water, driving the few early beach-goers back to the shelter of their cars and away. However, the moment the wind died down and the waves returned to a steady and safe pulse, the sand was slowly repopulated.
Carrying their boards safely under their arms, the sleek, wet-suited figures trail carefully down the slippery, winding stairs of Devils Punchbowl State Park near Newport, Ore. Once on the beach, they huddle in groups and examine the water, searching for the current that will carry them out beyond the surf. Then, floating their boards in front of them, the surfers brave the waves head-on, slowly making their way deeper out into the Pacific Ocean.
Surfing as a sport can be traced back through hundreds, possibly even thousands of years of Polynesian culture. However, surfing wasn’t introduced to North America until the late 1800s when three Hawaiian princes on vacation, David Kawananakoa, Edward Keliiahonui and Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole, took to the mild surf of Santa Cruz, Calif. on handmade redwood boards. By the 1950s, surfing had grown to be a favorite past time on both American coasts. However, it took the sport a bit longer to roll in north toward the chilly beaches of the Oregon Coast. According to Scott and Sandy Blackman, authors of Oregon Surfing: Central Coast, surfing finally took off in Oregon near Newport sometime in the 1960s when a group of young boys took to the frigid waves of Agate Beach without even the protective warmth of modern wetsuits. The group founded the Agate Beach Surf Club, and sought to discover and connect the other small surfing communities along the Oregon Coast.
While not as conspicuous as in California and Hawaii, surfing thrives in Oregon and its community is active across the entire state. What drives them are the waves which and lure in hundreds of surfers year round. The Oregon Coast is home to numerous magnet surf spots, like Newport and Seaside, each of which has its own history, close-knit community, and uniquely treasured waves. The Coast is also home to a number of nationally recognized surf competitions, the most prominent being the Nelscott Reef Big Wave Classic (NRBWC.) The competition was established in 2005 by John Forse, a Santa Cruz, Calif. native, and one of the first surfers to take on the legendary waves of Nelscott Reef in 1995. Today, it attracts professional surfers from all over the world. In 2010, the NRBWC also became the first of its kind to offer a big wave contest for women. The success of the competition is testament to two things that Oregon surfers hold dear: the quality of their waves and the closeness of their community.
Oregon surfing continues to develop its prominence in the worldwide surfing community with the founding of contests such as NRBWC and its growing number of tourist surfers. But for the surfers who actually make the Oregon Coast their home, surfing is much more than just a hobby or a sport. Even for casual surfers in Oregon, surfing is a lifestyle. It’s a philosophy. It’s a relationship with nature and a spiritual experience that is uniquely Oregonian.
“Surfing in Oregon is a mission,” University of Oregon student and surfer Luke Shimmon says. Shimmon was born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii, and grew up in the warm swells of tropical waves. He learned to surf as a small child and became an avid surfer during his junior year of high school. Shimmon says surfing in Oregon differs from surfing in Hawaii in a number of ways.
Because of Oregon’s colder water temperatures that barely reach the mid 50s, even during the summertime, full-body wetsuits are essential when surfing in the Coast. “It’s almost like a different sport, ‘cause your movements are so different in a wetsuit,” Shimmon says. It’s been quite the change for him; he grew up surfing in nothing but board shorts year round. However, while the water is cold, Oregon’s beaches are far less crowded than those in Hawaii. That provides better chances to what what he came for: catch waves. “You can just drive up and down the Coast and no one’s in the water,”  Shimmon says.
Though he hopes to return to Hawaii one day to become a teacher, Shimmon says he’s caught some of the best waves of his life here in Oregon. He says that surfing will always be a part of his life because of the focus and the centeredness it’s given him over the years. “Every single wave you catch is always different. It’s unique every single time, and it’s all in the moment,” Shimmon says. “I can’t really describe the real feeling of it because when I’m on a wave, it’s instinctual. Every thought I have is in the moment.”
What many of the surfers have in common is they find surfing to be a meditative experience because surfing requires total control and immersion of one’s body and mind in order to simply stay on the board. However, while that may be true for some, not all surfers strive for this sort of total self-awareness and peace when engaging in the sport. Contrary to the “laid-back” surfer stereotype, some surf communities defend their rights to the waves with fervor of legendary proportions.
Seaside, Ore. is notorious for its awesome waves and viciously protective locals. Cautionary tales of Seaside localism permeate surf forums online, warning visitors of the consequences of venturing into Seaside’s waters. The mildest of stories tell mainly of verbal abuse and discourteousness by locals to visitors in the water, like pushing other surfers out of waves. The more serious instances involve vandalism, sabotage, and even violence, such as slashing car tires and throwing rocks at visitors.
These warnings extend to not only surfers, but also photographers, as there are several stories of professional and recreational photographers being confronted or having rocks thrown at them as a result of surfers defending their turf. Due to good surf locations on the Oregon Coast being often isolated and hard to get to, many localized surfing communities have secret spots that are informally reserved for the locals only. Surfers often refrain from publishing the names of these spots online, or even dropping them in casual conversation. To locals, a camera on their turf could mean the unveiling of their community’s secret waves to the hungry eyes of surfers across the country.
Unfortunately, local aggression isn’t the only issue found within the surfing community. Women, now more than 33 percent of the surfing population, still look to be treated fairly within the community. According to Board-Trac, a board sports marketing research company, the percentage of women in the surfing population has jumped at least 14 percent. The economic data backs up these numbers as well. Between 1996 and 2006, Roxy, the largest surf apparel company for women, saw its sales jump from $20 million to $650 million. However, despite the increase in female participation within the worldwide surfing community, women still encounter barriers when it comes to getting involved with the sport, especially at the professional level. Women’s surf competitions have significantly smaller purses than men’s competitions; the Quicksilver Pro Tour (a men’s competition) has a top cash prize of $500,000. The Roxy Pro Tour (the women’s equivalent of the Quicksilver competition) has a prize of only $250,000. Mostly female participation in surfing is seen as an economic opportunity which ends in the unwelcome sexualization of female surfers.
“In all the surf shops, all plastered along the walls, there’s always girls in bikinis,” Nicole Lock, a Media Studies masters student at University of Oregon, says. “There’s never a woman standing in a full-on wetsuit, dominating a wave, or looking awesome on a board just because she’s awesome.” Lock says that while she’s never encountered sexism personally out in the water and surfing around men, she can’t help but notice the prevalence of it in surfing media. “When you get into the surfing culture, women are included in those communities, but they are always super sexualized,” she says.
While there are problems within the global surfing community, it seems the majority of Oregon’s small yet thriving surf community wish only to share their joy and love of the activity. One of these individuals is Dan Hasselschwert, a man whose life has been molded by surfing since his early adulthood.
Hasselschwert  first discovered surfing when he moved to Corvallis as a middle school teacher, shortly after earning his teaching degree in Ohio. He had always been interested in board sports, however, having been landlocked his entire life, he had never gotten the opportunity to surf. He immediately fell in love with the sport and decided to move to the coast in order to be closer to the waves. He found another teaching job at Waldport Middle School, and settled into Newport, Ore.
There, the town’s weathered green welcome sign proclaims Newport as “The Friendlist.” Hasselschwert began a middle school surfing club to promote the sport locally. Unfortunately, he began to notice that the attitudes towards new and aspiring surfers by locals were discouraging. Much of the negativity originated at the town’s local surf shops. “Not everyone is all about having fun and sharing,” Hasselschwert says. The locals expressed their concern that inviting inexperienced kids to the water would disrupt their quiet and serene surfing locale. “Waves are a limited resource and when it gets crowded you’re gonna get fewer waves,” Hasselschwert says.
Disappointed by the community’s pessimism, he decided to take the initiative to begin to mend minds in the Newport surfing community. His solution to the problem: open a new and more inclusive surf shop where surfers of all types would be welcomed. “I saw a real need for rentals, and lessons, and opportunities to get the community involved,” he says. In 2000, Hasselschwert bought Ossie’s Surf Shop and began to share his love of surfing with the community. Now, fourteen years later, Hasselschwert has seen the attitudes among the Newport surfing community change drastically since the opening of his shop, returning the little town once more to its reputation as “The Friendliest.”
Hasselschwert says that now he sees all types of surfers come into Ossie’s, ranging from land-locked beginners to seasoned surfing locals. The discouraging tension has mostly fallen away to a shared enthusiasm for surfing and love of the ocean among his customers and members of the community. Hasselschwert doesn’t like to think there is an ongoing rivalry between Ossie’s and the other surfs shops in town, though he does say with a chuckle, “If your goal is to discourage people, that’s probably not a very good business plan.”
In many ways, the Oregon Coast is an ideal location to begin learning how to surf. Though the water might be colder than other places, and the weather slightly greyer, Oregon has a vast variety of different kinds of surf to choose from, and there is little competition when it comes to catching waves. But surfing isn’t easy anywhere. Learning how to surf requires determination, patience, courage, and an understanding of the ocean’s power, as well as one’s own limitations.
“At first it’s ridiculously frustrating.” Nora Willauer, a University of Oregon sophomore, says. “Before you can stand up on a board, you have to paddle out far enough and get squashed by about 25 waves.” Willauer began surfing in Oregon last year when she moved from her home state of Maine to Eugene to study music. She says she was obsessed with surfing for a couple years before moving to Oregon. However, despite growing up near water and being a knowledgeable sailor at a young age, she’d never had the opportunity to try surfing before moving west. Willauer says that moving to Oregon is what finally enabled her to try surfing. She says the Oregon Coast appealed to her because it is more geographically isolated, and the beaches are less crowded than in California or Hawaii. And, Willauer is used to the colder water temperatures, having grown up with them in Maine. At the beginning of her freshman year, Willauer and her roommate loaded themselves up into a friend’s Volkswagen Bus and headed to the coast for a week-long crash course in Oregon Coast surfing.
Willauer recalls that week as being a mixed bag; it was a physically and mentally draining exercise in trial and error, though each evening it was met with beautiful sunsets. While surfing was new to her, working hard and practicing to learn a nuanced skill was not.  “Being a musician teaches you how to learn new skills because you deal with frustration all day, everyday,” she says. Eventually, after umpteen disheartening attempts met only by unforgiving, watery beatings, Willauer finally managed to catch her first wave. She says that at that point, just for a moment, she could simply “forget about all of the bruising, and the egg-beatering, and the frustration.”
Willauer and her friends now venture to the coast every weekend for what they have dubbed, “Surf Sunday.” She says she looks forward to Surf Sunday all week because it gives her a break from thinking about the grueling routine and stress of school. Willauer says that surfing always leaves her with a greater sense of perspective. “Being in the ocean is like being in something so powerful that you have absolutely no chance of controlling it,” she says. “When you get thrown off a wave, it’s the most humbling thing in the world, because you can’t fight it. It’s so good for your ego, and it’s so good for your soul.”