Keaau Surfing—The Protocol

The Haulie Factor

Straight out from the park there was no beach, just a rocky coral
shelf. It was great to walk on, but swimming was dangerous.
More often than not, the waves would throw you up against the shelf's jagged
edges (not a pleasant experience). The swimming beach was at the north
end of Keaau, that's where the surfers congregated. That's also where
I tried surfing (I was given a surfboard as present when one of the surfers
went back to the mainland). I found the surfing protocol too demanding,
though.

In Hawaii, I was considered haulie (a white skinned non Hawaiian).
Among the locals, haulies were considered either a threat, or just
an undesirable part of the landscape. When it came to surfing, though,
haulies (at least at Keaau) were expected defer to the locals. To
avoid offending anybody, it was best to surf when nobody was out on
the waves, and that was only when the surf was down. Bodysurfing was
different, however. Those waves broke close to shore. Actually, I was more
than happy to let the locals have their waves. All I needed to make me
happy was to be able to see, hear, and feel the waves. If I had to, I
could do that from the rocky shelf or anywhere else.

In fact, I spent a good deal of time sitting next to the shelf’s tidal
pools. These natural aquariums offered up crayfish and other assorted marine
animals a breather from Ma Nature’s food chain. Cradled safely within
the pools, the young escaped from the ocean’s more dangerous waters and
tidal currents. Sitting above the pools, I would watch as the baby eel gracefully
plucked algae from the pitted rock surfaces while the more colorful tiny fish
darted to and fro across the bottoms of the larger pools. Occasionally, an
overzealous wave would wash across these tidal pools, sending crabs and
company back into the sea where dinner was constantly being served.
But, until high tide at least, most of these prodigious youth would remain
free from the meld that, ultimately, weaves everything back into the
patchwork of nature’s organic quilt.