Surfing Alone : Some days the surface of the sea will be smooth, like glass. Surfers, in one of their less creative terms, call this "glassy". Surfing a glassy day is a treat - for comparison, it's like powder snow for skiers, like a stamp collector finding a pristine first edition at a garage sale. On a glassy day with a decent swell running, I think one gets pretty close to seeing the pure energy of nature (forgive me for a second - I haven't become a crystal-hugger - keep reading). That is: the waves have come a long way - thousands of miles - and during that time, the initial frenzy of the storm that created them has been smoothed out so that when they roll towards you, all you can really see is that original energy bending the smooth sea surface into a wall - a perfect sine curve, in fact, if you were to stop time, and take a cross-section.

When that rolling energy meets the edge of the sea - the beach, the reef - the wave breaks and is finally lost on the shore. The energy it has been carrying gets transformed into heat, noise and light. A surfer gets to take part in that transformation, taking a teeny part of the energy with them, changing the smallest part of the wave's potential into movement of their own, which in turn becomes heat in the body, blood pumping through the heart, awareness flooding the brain (I really haven't turned New Age - I swear...).

So, as the walls of energy comes towards you, you are sitting in the water waiting, having driven a few miles, walked a few yards or flown over continents to be there. And a decision has to be made, usually quite quickly: shall we ride this one? Has the earth put just a touch too much (or too little) juice into it? How good are you really? Stick or twist? Feeling lucky?

Yesterday was like that.

High tide was at about 10am, so at 7.30 I sat and watched beautifully shaped waves break onto the reef, and wondered about going out to surf them. The wave breaks across the harbor of a small fishing village. I've been here every day for almost three weeks, so the locals say hi, or "hello surfer", and give me a wave as I sit looking. I would be completely alone - K is the only one other surfer on the island, and he's a Seventh Day Adventist, so no surfing on Saturday for him.

The waves were a touch on the large side, and quite fast, so I was a little nervous. I was going to use a board I'd borrowed from K, because he insisted that I push my surfing, go faster, '"throw some spray". It's smaller, lighter, more fickle than I'm used to. But I'd been waiting a week for conditions to be right...

So. A good guideline in surfing (and in life) is that unless it's genuinely dangerous, you paddle out. You do your diligence: check the current, gauge the size, do your stretches, put on your sunblock, check your leash, do a little bow towards Mecca (or whereever your prevailing deity lives), and you paddle out. You paddle out if you're feeling grumpy, tired, a little whingey, or in this case, nervous. Because it's likely that if you paddle out, something will happen - at the very least, a little learning. And it's certain that if you don't, today will be pretty much like all the others, and where's the fun in that?

So I paddled out. For the first ten minutes, I sat in the channel and watched as the energy walls whizzed by and broke - the tops crashing over quickly to form little tubes (yes!). It was very sunny and hot, even at 7.30 in the morning. I stuck my head under water to cool off. The waves were clear blue, and the peaks bright white. The village was going about its business - I could see the occasional car on the road, distantly smell somebody frying fish for breakfast. I edged closer to the peak where the waves were breaking and paddled around a bit to try and lose the nerves. Finally, a wall came towards me that was not too big, not too small, looked like it had some safety zone to it, so I paddled in.

I got to my feet fast, stood up, and took off. To my right was a wall of clear water about four feet high, moving fast, extending out about fifty yards. Behind me, the noise of the breaking peak. Underneath me, visible through the almost transparent water, coral heads, rocks.

The art of surfing really well is to be as close to the breaking part of the wave as possible (the lip, the peak, the "pit" on a big wave). In fact, to play with it - bounce off it (an "off the lip"), get under it (a tube ride), ride over it (a "floater"). Good surfers "go deep" (take off right at the point the wave breaks), "take a late drop" (same thing), "get fully pitted" (ride inside the wave), "bash one off the lip" (hit the breaking part of the wave so hard you hear the "whack"). Hence sentences in Australian surfing magazines like: "Wardo got fully pitted so often that Jacko and Rabbit were spewing". But this is probably more than you need to know...

On this particular wave I dropped down the face, turned away and, relieved that I was still standing up, hammered down the shoulder - the non-breaking, non-threatening part of the wave - as fast as I could. No turns, no tuberides, just a yuppie getting out of the wave as fast as his limited skills will let him. I kicked out, dropped back onto the board to paddle back, and felt a tremendous release - the first wave done and over with, the energy transferred to me rippling through my mind and body.

Then, things got fun - I tried an off the lip, and got spat off the wave as though I weighed about an ounce. I sort of thought about trying a tube ride, and while I was thinking about it, the wave hit me on the head and knocked me underwater. I took off on a wave that lined up perfectly - the shoulder stood up in front of me, about head-high, like a crystal blue ramp, tapering off across the bay. I was too surprised to yell, so ended up just grinning and nodding all the way to the end of the wave and out. There's a great sensation of recognition when the wave does that ("wow this is going to be beautiful") followed by the emptiness of actually riding (because if you think something like "this is great" you will certainly fall off), followed by release and a huge energy surge as you kick out. All of this takes maybe five seconds.

Being alone, I could take whatever waves I wanted. Wait out the lulls by looking at the sky, looking at my feet, checking out the dolphins drifting by outside the harbor. With no possibility of anybody caring what my surfing looked like, I could try whatever moves I wanted, let waves go by, take off on waves I really shouldn't.

Surfing a good day alone is a great luxury - it has the feel of rare experience. There is an edge of solitude, which is part of the cost, I think - the moments are seen and felt only by you, and then are gone. If I'd surfed that day with K, or friends from California, it would have been equally memorable, but quite different - more of a party, less of a meditation.

Three hours later, real life began to intrude. I was very, very hot, needed some food, a storm was showing on the horizon, and the tide was dropping, so the coral was getting a little close at times. I went in, watched the waves some more - because of the incoming storm, they were now a metallic grey, with the white peaks almost luminescent. Towelled off. Went to have lunch.

These moments of grace don't last. Which is their real lesson to us, I think. To me, anyway, having spent the best part of my life trying to find them and make them stick for as long as possible. They can be as short as an instant, or as long as a decade, but they'll move on eventually. This one was about half a day. Once they are gone, we get to practice our lives, look after our families, wait for the weather to change, and do what we can to be ready for the next one. Which may be a very long while, or a few days. But if we are ready, it will come along, and we can be grateful for it.