Loss

When loss comes my way it normally takes me completely by surprise and flattens me, knocking the very essence I consider my soul out of me. It happens to us all, most commonly it takes the form of death. Loss is hard for some to talk about and leaves a void in its wake that is never filled, just buried somewhere, I've often thought that's what we call "experience".

 Anyway Loss has nothing to do with people but rather waves. Mexico is somewhere I have never visited to surf. The points of the north look pretty alluring, the beachies further south of Puerto Escondido and Pascales looking a bit too thumping, but it looks like  it has all the hallmark signs of a great surf trip destination and home for local surfers.

 What a shame it is then, that should I go to Mexico I will never to get surf Harry's Point. It looked like the kind of wave I'd love:

It was a right hand point in the warm with quality. I'll never get to go there because it passed away in 2005. It was put to sleep by Sempra Shell LNG who made it into a gas terminal . The real kicker is that it is debatble whether they actually owned the land in the first place, but that's Latin American Politics right?!?!

I can only imagine how local surfers felt watching as the trucks rolled in and filled her in:

There she went and now?

I can't imagine the state I could get into about someone doing this to my beloved G spot or Praa Sands. The places where we ride waves, make and meet friends, run away to, feel stoked, encounter dolphins and sharks, see sun rises and sun sets...you get the picture.

Save The Waves Coalition helped me regarding the changes to the wave "Herradura" just outside Lima in Peru. They do good work and they know they're stuff.

I learnt from them that if you are a surfer from:

1)  Bahia de Gijón, Spain,

 2) Bastion Point, Victoria, Australia,

3) Broadbench, United Kingdom,

4) Various places in Chile

5) La Boya, Dominican Republic,

 6) Los Cabos, Baja, Mexico, 

7) Playa Yankee, Nicaragua,

 8)  Rodiles, Austurias, Spain,

 9) San Mateo, Ecuador .

Then you are experiencing loss, you are losing waves now, today and tomorrow, whether its bulldozers of MNC's or mariners, Military access, dredgers etc... your G-spot is disappearing infront of your eyes, some may come back to you others will not.

Many more are in the waiting room not some distant time to be decided but next month, a couple of beaches are actually waiting for the bulldozers to be freed up from the surf they're destroying now. Save The Wave Coalition give support to breatheren and give us all a chance to stand together, their site is clear and interesting, to check it out click here.

 Despite the Germans trouncing of our football team the other day, they know about loss, pain and suffering, so my final thoughts on the issue I'm going to hand over to Pastor Niemoller who summed up collective action better than most, when testifying in Frankfurt in 1946, he gave the following address:

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist

.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."