Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. โค๏ธ

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

๐Ÿ”  ๐Ÿ’€  ๐Ÿ“ธ  ๐Ÿ˜ญ  ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ  ๐Ÿค   ๐ŸŽฌ  ๐Ÿฅ”

A Long Surfing Life

I really enjoyed this profile by William Finnegan of 75-year-old Jock Sutherland, who was one of the best surfers in the world in the late 60s and who still cherishes a good wave.

A surfer as famous as he was could have made enough money for an easy retirement, I thought, but Sutherland hadn’t cashed in. Surfing was never, to his mind, a job. Even when he was at the apex of the surfing world, he was unimpressed, stubborn. There was no pro tour in those days. “You could work for a board manufacturer, maybe have your own signature-model board,” he told me. “But that meant sell, sell, sell. That was…crass. I mean, the banality. It was antithetical to being able to enjoy being out in the water.”

Sutherland’s mom, Audrey, sounds like an amazing person:

Audrey drew up a list of things that every child should be able to do by age sixteen and stuck it on the wall. It read, in part:

- Clean a fish and dress a chicken

- Write a business letter

- Splice or put a fixture on an electric cord

- Operate a sewing machine and mend your own clothes

- Handle a boat safely and competently

- Save someone drowning using available equipment

- Read at a tenth grade level

- Listen to an adult talk with interest and empathy

- Dance with any age

This list changed with the times, adding computers and contraception, and nobody really kept score, but everybody got the idea.

Finnegan wrote Barbarian Days, a memoir of his life as a surfer โ€” I loved it.

Discussion  4 comments

Nicholas Gaffney

Barbarian Days is wonderful.

Brendan Leonard

His mother's books about her solo adventures, Paddling My Own Canoe and Paddling North, are fantastic reads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/670010.Audrey_Sutherland

Colter Mccorkindale

Well that's a purchase on "Paddling My Own Canoe," then.

Chaston Kome

Probably one of my favorite books I've read this year, just amazing writing all the way through. One thing I was struck by reading it is how recollections of a particular surf will stretch on for pages in great detail, but then major sections of his life story will just sort of quickly glossed over.

Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.

Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.

Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!