gate night/ devil night

la push is not a surf spot. . . ghost story

warning this is a reposting from two years ago, not a new tale of horror

first of all let me state that i do not now nor have i ever really believed in ghosts, that said i am afraid that i have brought a ghost or some spirit home with me in my van, my famous van from last Halloween, in which Jake and i built a coffin and put in spooky lights, strobes, and cobwebs and dressed like ghouls and drove around scaring the crap out of children and trying to get them to do their homework, very frightening, i made a garbage bag suit with duct tape and Jake lay in the coffin screaming and pushing the lid up. which points out the old adage, about not messing with the fates, or the dead, whichever, so i guess i took it too far. . .


last week having time off, being a bum, and going crazy stuck in this city, i packed the van and raced to La Push, the swell looked good, like five foot at fourteen seconds, no wind, weekday, no one would be polluting the water, i'd have the place to myself, sweet. did i say sunny and glassy too, shit i drove as fast as my little brownie could and made the turn after second beach, heart racing, tires squealing, autumn in the air already, made the turn and huhm? not great but there were a few bumps rolling in, nice, no one out, sunshine and pelicans.


so i'm surfing a few hours and the waters all silty, and orange looking, very cold again, and the set waves are all kind of curtain walls from one end of the beach to the other, and i'm getting a few nice rights and great lefts, but i keep trying to come back up to the top and every time i do the wave smashes down on my and hucks me over the falls, crushed into the sand, funny, alright then, maybe i'll duck down then instead and i get a few sandy barrels, all frozen and green filthy, smashed, i'm getting my ass kicked and pounded, by these close outs, and my board, my whole right side is pummelled, i catch a rail hard whacked to my hip bone and scream, then a fin stab to the calf muscle, and finally as i'm tucking into a cover up grab my rail and get destroyed, snapping my wrist back. i give up and paddle out again and wait and while i'm waiting, looking out to sea, i see this thing like a seal with a white head, or a small porpoise with a skull head swimming very slowly toward me, looking at me from underwater, looking like a fucking skull head, no joke, and swimming for me, slowly like a predator, shit, so i don't want to be scared out of the water, but i don't want to ignore instincts either, so i catch a wave and ride it all the way south and paddle back out, the water is so glassy and the sun so warm that i stay out a little while longer and some other guys paddle out, someone waves to me and i don't know anyone in the water, they all look like wetsuits to me, i wave back and smile, paddle down the beach and go eat lunch.


living the life, reading a book on the log jams drinking tea, throwing rocks at rocks, watching the pelicans fly like time machines, watching the fishermen, walk the jetty, sit in the van, wait for the tide to change and suit up, suit up.


but La Push is not a surf spot, there is no sand, there is no gravel, where did all the sand go?why are there no sandbars?why is there only shore pound?


i declare that La Push is not a surf spot, it's a beach, it's a great camp spot, it's beautiful, it has a lot to do, low tide hikes to James island, cliffs to climb, great chilling around a fire, log jam climbing wonderful. fireworks all summer.


maybe next year the rivers will push out some debris, maybe all the third and second beach sand will migrate back to first beach, like two years ago, when this sick sand bar developed for about two months of perfect rights, jesus it was like paradise, then just washed away and gone for years.


anyway, then it's dark and i'm in the van reading, that fucking book Matter, when car headlights pull up behind me, no, i whisper, why, and some guy knocks on my door, and i blind him with my flash light and hi he says, i slid open the door and he's from canada, of course, and drove out here from edmonton, like three thousand miles and he's a surf kayaker, and i tell him, to keep away from the surfers, they'll just yell at him, he's beginner, and he wants to know if he can camp here, and i say with me? no, and he's kind of creeping me out, but his tan toyota van is pimped, so we talk a little and he drives to town for a phone card and i'm glad he's going, read some more and fall asleep.


And jump awake with my knife out because someone is in the fucking van with me, i look around, nothing of course, look outside, this happens all night i sleep with my knife and in the morning some one has moved my wet suit in front of the sliding door, ghosts or kids, jonesy, ghost, floating skull heads, ahhh.


the surf looks shitty, i drink coffee, check the river mouth too sectiony, bumped out, fogged over, i go home. with a broken hip and charlie horsed calf, the van runs like it's fresh off the factory floor not twenty fives years old.


forget to tell the kids about the skull and the ghost, because of all my beat down, limping around.


the next morning mee mee tells me that dashiell saw a skull head under his bed, with red eyes. screaming, i check the webcams' pop advil.
and drive around with ghosts and skull heads, in the passenger seat, and it's not even october. boo.

herbie fletcher Astro deck

Gross~
i just remembered that my first wet suit was a used six mil. previously worn by Francis, gross~
i hacked the hood off with a party knife, but, why, i don't know

My first surfboard was a Herbie Fletcher Astrodeck, and man that thing was a beast, i think it was 8 foot or so, and about six inches thick i loved that monster, i think i bought it from D. Brooks, somebody had already buckled it in half and repaired with Popsicle sticks and epoxy
i snapped it in half at la push one spring morning~ surfing shore pound, before i could find the steering wheel
i should have put it back together and hung it on the wall, all i kept was the deck graphic

Damn~ NE!L ~

what we hide behind

La Push~ frozen

i lay awake on Sunday morning frozen~ but i didn't want to miss the dawn so i bundled up and crawled out of the van, so cold but so very perfectly brilliantly beautiful, without a single whiff of fuzziness

it's really hard to put on a wet~ frozen 5mill wet suit when the air is 36 degrees

your alone and the waves are pipsqueaks

the girls of dirty south~

Spence !

build huge fires, burn holes in pants shiver and wait for the sun

girl as frozen rocketship

first light flash frozen

i waited in the actual fire for the sun

look at the ocean steaming, that's something you don't see here too often, warm water against cold air !

spent the morning riding the sweetest glass right and lefts, and spent the rest of the day kooking out

i'm like that~

there are no actual pictures of surfing on this blog, because i can't surf and no one else was here

my water camera is broken, there are no surf spots in Washington, nobody surfs, the wind is always on it, it's bumped out, it's broken~ you should go snowboarding

my love~ your love~ we can share

little Dashiell took this picture of me, i was trying to show the steam puring out of my lungs~ fucking cold~ note gloves, down jacket, knit cap, cold

improvised snow shovelling device

we needed daylight fires to get out of the van

i was going to call this post clip on penis, because dash, made this outrageous clay thing like a banana hammock that he hung from his pants, and asked me with complete seriousness, what if we were raindrops ?

that's why i like camping with kids~ they never stop spewing nonsense

this photo finds him asking me questions about invisible marshmallows

{i could deny societies guilty reach}

{i could describe ravens and seagulls eating lunch against life's struggles}

{i could bore you with Latin names}

tiny explorers

like little globby jellies stuck to twigs

we pick things up and thrown them into the waves, throw sticks for dogs and try to find a reason to suit up

we return~

NE!L~

growing up

these two boys are my little guys~ i thought it would be nice to interview them every few weeks, Forest wouldn't speak, Dashiell was very boyish.

tooth-pick

i found this thing on the side of the road in Seattle, WA. it was painted purple with huge blisters, standing up against a wall~ free

i looked at jake and said, hey, that's a paddleboard, pulled a u-turn and grabbed it~ now we use it as a back porch table

some kook made it out of eight foot sheets of plywood and put the seam right in the middle, where all the flex and weakness is, and used steel/ now rusting nails, instead of brass

the nose~ all de-laminated and smelly

after i used a heat gun to remove all the crappy purple paint, i sanded it all down and tongue oiled it, i think i sealed it too with marine varnish or clear coated a few times, it is not water tight, i should have glassed it, but it's just too damn heavy

i took it down to the lake once and discovered that these things really paddle fast, now, i want to build a light weight version as a stand up paddler

this monster is 12'9"

more~ late

NE!L~