ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

On a particularly terrible afternoon at Higgins Beach, my roommate, John Lane ’21, and I were the only ones out in an ocean that looked like soapy bathwater. It was forty degrees, warm for early March in Maine, but the water was probably close to forty too. A crosswind howled up the bay, churning the water into a foamy mess, with waves breaking into each other in every direction. There’s a very specific kind of pain that comes from dunking your head underwater to evade a broken wave. It’s a feeling remarkably similar to brain freeze, but it’s more malicious than anything you might get from a bowl of ice cream. Maine surfers know the feeling well.

I learned to surf during my first year at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ. My roommate, who grew up down the road in Yarmouth, had surfed his whole life. I, on the other hand, had about as much surfing experience as you’d expect from an eighteen-year-old who grew up nowhere near the ocean in western Virginia. I grew accustomed to following John into truly horrendous conditions. Most days, when I asked him how the waves were, he’d reply with one of a number of catchphrases he used to egg me on. Among them were “doable” or “could be fun” or “yeah, there could be a little something out there.”

On this day in 2019, in our sophomore spring, there was definitely “a little something out there.” Whether it could be fun or was even doable was in serious doubt.

By then, a community of surfers had grown at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ. What once seemed like an inside joke between roommates was blossoming into an eager community of folks willing to cancel plans, wake up before the sunrise, or brave nor’easters to hurl themselves into the ocean, and then, for some reason, choose to come back.

But on this particular violent day in midwinter, it was just me and John. In the brief moments of peace between set after foamy set, I asked myself the only question worth asking in that situation.

It’s a question every ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ surfer has asked themselves, I think, at one point or another, head throbbing while looking out at the blank sea—why am I surfing, and why am I surfing here?

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ students have been surfing in Maine since at least the mid-’70s. With no phones, internet, or Surfline to forecast the waves, students like Hank Lange ’76 and Sprague Ackley ’76 relied on NOAA weather radios and a fair amount of luck to score waves. “People came to surf activity in organic and chance ways,” according to Dave Menz ’85. As a sophomore, Menz remembers living upstairs in the house of former director of Moulton Union Don Lancaster, which sat on the lot now occupied by the Roux Center for the Environment. That year, Menz found a seven-foot-two, red-finned Plastic Fantastic board in Lancaster’s garage and started going on trips.

Stories of those early trips read like the stuff of other early East Coast surf lore—half epic mission into the unknown, half DIY school project. After finding the Plastic Fantastic, Menz went with Scott Harrison ’85 to a dive shop in Brunswick to look for a wetsuit. Having pooled their money, Menz and Harrison could afford to rent one half of one wetsuit for an afternoon. They went with the top—a quarter-inch-thick wetsuit jacket with a beaver-tailed bottom and nothing to cover the legs. With one board and one piece of wetsuit to share, Menz and Harrison were forced to take turns surfing, while the other would watch from behind a rock on the snow-covered beach. Other times, they went with no wetsuit at all, wearing wool caps and “some other ridiculous clothing modifications, which failed,” said Menz. “It was obviously so crazy.”

It’s an understatement. Reading Menz’s account of these trips in an email, I think, These guys were insane. Having surfed here, I’ve been advised by people who know better than I do that doing anything in the Gulf of Maine in winter requires a full wetsuit that’s at least five millimeters thick, along with booties, gloves, and a hood that covers as many inches of your face as possible. I’ve been close to hypothermia wearing all of it.

But, not knowing better, Menz and company made it work. It was February of 1983, before you could order gear online and before surf shops dotted the East Coast.

By spring, a community was growing. Menz and Harrison were joined by a group of five or six like-minded surfers who had caught wind of their misadventures along the coast.

Among the group was Adrian Bossi ’85, a frizzy-haired carpenter from Cape Cod who remembers those trips with a wistful fondness. I meet Bossi outside his home in Brunswick, and he gives me a sampling of his favorite memories from those early trips—scoring hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps in the water from some local kayakers, listening to Beach Boys tunes on a Sony Walkman on the beach with the crew while watching one of them surf in their lone wetsuit. Eventually, Bossi got his own—a holey yellow-and-orange suit that he covered in Saran Wrap to keep the water out (remember Menz’s ridiculous clothing modifications, which failed).

It had no designation on campus, but the group eventually dubbed themselves the Subzero Surf Club. They were a dedicated bunch. Forecasts be damned, Bossi remembers going with the Subzero crew to check the waves “every single day.” They would go to Small Point, a finicky right-point break not far from Popham Beach.

“If the waves weren’t good, we’d still just go in the water and splash around,” said Bossi. Bossi has since surfed in Australia and the South Pacific, but he remembers his time surfing in Maine as particularly special. “I’ve surfed some great spots, but just the camaraderie of surfing with those friends in Maine made it so much better there.”

Menz sees it the same way. “At the end of the day, what became clear to us was the joy of immersing in wild nature, where sea meets land, together with friends,” Menz writes. “That’s the mere simplicity of what we were up to, and that spirit has remained with us throughout our lives, as we are still immersing in the wilds.”

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Tagging along on many of those trips with the Subzero crew was a kayaker—Mike Woodruff ’87. Perhaps no one has seen more of ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ’s surf history than Woodruff, who paddled out with the early members of Subzero, and is known to students today as the head of the ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Outing Club, a position he’s held since 1992.

Woodruff recounts how, until recently, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ’s surf scene was usually limited to a group of six to ten at a time, mostly made up of people who weren’t dedicated surfers until college. “Nowadays, we have a bunch of surfers who come in with experience, and they plug right in,” Woodruff says. “Back in the day, guys were kind of just reinventing the wheel—finding boards in a basement or a garage and figuring it out with a Saran Wrap wetsuit.”

There’s joy in reinventing the wheel, though. Woodruff talks about the misadventures of his Subzero friends with the same reserved spark as when he talks of the generations of beginner surfers who have rolled through trips with the BOC.

“You don’t have to be an advanced surfer to totally get your life’s energy from it,” Woodruff says. “No matter the conditions or your ability level, it’s already a net gain to spend the day outside—and then, when you do have an awesome day, it’s mind-blowing.”

This is a graciousness fitting for people who surf, especially in Maine. For those who immerse themselves in it, surfing anywhere is more than just an activity—it’s a way of life, a guide for surrendering to the unpredictability of nature and finding joy in whatever comes. In Maine, with its always frigid waters and rarely consistent waves, perfect days happen but are few and far between. Ask anyone who’s surfed here, and they’ll tell you it makes those days even sweeter, and every day in between more worth showing up for.

While there have almost always been a few stoked surfers at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, Woodruff says that, compared to other outdoor sports, the BOC has had a harder time finding those willing to teach surfing to beginners. As surf crews came and went, for years the scene stayed limited to the few obsessives willing to seek out the sport largely on their own.

But, slowly, that would change.

The first time Zoe Wood went surfing, she was teaching it. Wood ’18 was studying abroad in Chile, and she had volunteered to work with a local environmental nonprofit near the coast. She was tasked with teaching English, environmental lessons, and surfing—the latter of which she had never done before.

“Suddenly I found myself pushing kids into waves and yelling, ‘Stand up! Stand up!’ when I couldn’t really surf myself,” says Wood.

But when presented an opportunity to share her love for the ocean with others, Wood ran with it. Wood grew up New York’s Hudson Valley, but she fell in love with the ocean swimming in the waters near her grandmother’s house on Long Island in the summer. The ocean guided her decision to come to ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, and it continued guiding her life from there.

When Wood returned to Maine for her senior year in 2017, surfing was more accessible than it had ever been at the College—the Outing Club had a sizable fleet of foam boards, and vans took several trips to the beach per week—but big challenges remained. BOC surf trips would fill up within seconds of them going live online. Before they were leaders themselves, Shona Ortiz ’21 and Abby Wu ’21 remember, they pestered leaders to tell them when they were going to post a trip so they could refresh their screens at just the right moment like they were in a Ticketmaster queue.

If you couldn’t land a spot in a BOC van, you’d need a car, a board, and a wetsuit, or to find someone who could supply you with all three. And that’s just to get in the water.

There are more pervasive barriers too, and Wood knows them well. Wood and other women surfers I talk to, especially those of color, have faced their share of suspicious looks and snide remarks in the lineup, in Maine and elsewhere—You know there are waves further inside, right? Do you know how to coat your board?

“I feel like I’m always scanning the crowd to see how many women and how many people of color are out there; it can really change a session,” says Wood.

It’s clear that she takes that awareness with her when she teaches. “It’s really important for someone to feel welcome in their first experiences in surfing, because that feeling of not belonging can be really insidious.”

Those feelings are only compounded by a sport where the learning curve is already steep. Wood notes a truth well known to anyone who starts surfing past their adolescence—before you’re any good, you’ll spend a long time being very, very bad. In Maine, you’ll also be very, ve