At the end of this month, June, I will have reached the 1000th Day in surfing daily at Roaring Beach.
Last Saturday, as I huddled next to a disintegrating sand dune while gale forced winds tried to rip the boogie board from the clinch of my arms and breaking offshore 28 ft/8 meter swells were altering the known landscape, I made the decision not to enter into the water.
This was a tough call for me and it didn’t come easy. I spent an hour weighing up all the pros and cons of any decision, from the rational standpoint, to the emotional, to my feeling of not wanting to break any aspect of this, more-than-three-year, ritual.
In the end, it was not that “sanity” prevailed. Rather, a calm, yet knowing inner voice calmly repeating “Respect and Humility are needed today” became clear enough for me to accept.
Simply put, the ocean was revealing an aspect of itself that did not allow for a land based human to enter into without possible serious injury. Not even for a committed daily ritual whose intended purpose was to experience directly whatever the ocean had in store for me for the day. To enter on this day would have been, not so much foolhardy, as disrespectful to the awesomeness of what was being shown.
And what was being exhibited was absolutely outrageous. Staying in the grandstand and not needing to enter into the main arena was going to be okay.
So, without donning the flippers and heading out into the water as I have done for over two and a half years, and even though part of me wanted to taste the thrill of being thrashed about on those roaring waves, I simply knelt at the top edge of the debris laden beach and when the next foaming wave came rushing up to hiss at me, I cupped its waters and splashed them on my face. This was my contact, my baptism with the ocean on this day.
For a few brief seconds, with eyes closed and as the water dripped off my face and the rocks hummed beneath the retreating wash of wave, I felt as though I were in the surf along with the dolphins riding those wondrous wet walls of power.
There were no decent breaks happening; mostly dumpers across the width of the beach. I thought that if I could get out past the breakers, I just might catch the odd good one.
The blessing of the day was that there were no more breaking waves. The third one was the last one of this particular set and I was able to free myself after about fifteen seconds and come up to a sea that was, thankfully, relatively quiet. 
Firstly, last Friday while swimming in relatively calm waters I pulled a shoulder muscle and lived with a high level of discomfort until I could get to Hobart to see a physio-therapist on Wednesday. And not one but two. Tethys did some osteopathic work that helped tremendously in relieving the chronic pain. Then Michael, my masseur for the past 19 years, did some deep tissue work that complimented Tethy’s earlier work. Their hands were healing hands for my neck and shoulder and I am tremendously grateful for the skills these two people possess.
Not that everyday has seen the water as benign as in the photo. Nor has it always been easy to get into a wet suit when a southerly is howling or when I had the flu this past winter. But go I did if for no other reason than to honour my commitment to swim everyday for three years, three months, three weeks and three days and to experience what a disciplined, daily ritual such as this might bring.
Back in October, 2002, I was originally only interested in seeing if I could swim daily for just three weeks. This, however, turned into three months, which led to half a year, then to a year, and now, here I am, at the top of the time curve looking down at a long, wet slide for another nineteen months (or through two more winters). 
Trouble is, it is getting more and more difficult to get out of bed in the morning without tripping up. 
