There’s No Place Like Home
Five a.m. on Tuesday. The house is surrounded and topped with snow and ice. It’s cold out and the wind sounds like it wants to come in as much as the cabin fever burning within me wants to go out.
Both my parents were outdoor people, especially my dad. If weather or some kind of obligation kept him inside for too long he got downright ornery, a trait he passed down to me. We walked the beach every weekend whatever the weather. Both parents skied and taught me at an early age.
As a result, I grew up believing that escaping to the freedom of the outdoors in Northeastern winters was only a matter of having the right clothing — warm boots, gloves, long underwear, knit hats — and something to do.
Eventually, knowing how to ski took me to Vermont, then out west to the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming. What struck me about these places was the “something to do” part. Ski resorts worked out arrangements with local schools. In Jackson, Wyo., students were provided with lockers to store their ski gear. One day each week during ski season — they were not told which day — they went skiing. The escape to the outdoors became part of the local culture.
As many of you are probably aware either by watching CNN or seeing the cover photo on last week’s East Hampton Star provided by James Katsipis, a few of Montauk’s hardcore surfers hit the waves, big waves, smack in the middle of the blizzard called Juno. Not that many years ago — you can count them on your fingers — surfing big waves in 20-degree air, 30-degree water, and gale-force winds would have been unthinkable.
The surfers in question mark a turning point. They were introduced to summertime surfing by parents and/or peers at an early age. And they inherited the wintertime escape strategy of parental surfers from an earlier generation (to the dismay, at times, of the Montauk School administration). Cold waves prompted the purchase of plane tickets to warm, Caribbean waves. The winter escape became a pioneering, migratory lifestyle that introduced young locals to the wonders of travel, “broadening their minds,” as the old saying goes, as well as their surfing abilities.
I met an old friend on the beach the other day at Ditch Plain. We began talking about the beauty of Montauk in winter. In the distance, we could see three wetsuited surfers trudging through the snow to the water. Later, I was struck by the fact that neither of us remarked on it.
We kept blabbing about the wonderful absence of people, closed restaurants, the broad beach. And then my friend, whose work takes him to many faraway places, said he’d considered moving from time to time, but in the end no other spot compared to Montauk. “There’s no place like home,” said Dorothy as her fever broke.
In Montauk and throughout the whole Northeast, surfing has become a year-round activity. Technology is responsible, of course. Modern wetsuits, some with battery-heated kidney pads, bear no comparison to the wetsuits of old, and before that the pathetic attempt by surfers to extend the season clothed in wool sweaters and Vaseline. Wetsuits have turned frigid water into a wine of sorts. They have become an alternative to the plane ticket, and spawned a culture.
A culture is born. A new sort of conversation is overheard at the post office in depths of winter: “Hey did you get any of those waves on Thursday?”
“No, but you should have been there Wednesday.”
Herman Melville observed that, “To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold.” In the same way, ski lodges are among the most wonderful indoor places in the world. Coming in comfortably tired from the cold, warming one’s butt by a crackling fire, sharing a glass of warm gluehwein is a perfect combination of inside and out, a balance that tropical places cannot offer.
I’ll tell you what’s coming. Someone is going to create a real surf lodge, a place where winter surfers can repair for hot showers, beer, gluehwein, soft couches, a fire, and music. You heard it here.