The top tree in the container is named "Bob" in honor of Bob Simmons, the pioneering surfer and designer. It got a name partly as a joke, a riff off an online thread about Simmons and his eccentricities, one of which was a fixation about oranges and health. I added two other trees and called them "Matt" and "Joe" (for Kivlin and Quigg respectively) just to maintain a theme. It's obviously quite a private joke, as contemporary surfing in 2002 might as well be from a different century from the era which spawned it. In the long run it doesn't even matter.
Surfing is golf these days, and who knows who came up with the different golf club designs? Irrelevant, one might say, except it's tough to sink a critical putt with a broomstick. Yet knowing the particulars of the creation of the equipment doesn't change the experience.
As we enter the adulthood of Surfing it's good to remember those who made it possible and pleasurable before they get lost in the mists of time. That this collective vanishment is inevitable is beyond dispute. The history of surfing is being written and rewritten this decade and these words will soon be "cast in stone", a rather unforgiving medium.
Me? I planted some trees, tend them, grow them, and enjoy the fruits of that effort. They taste better than what you pick up at the store. They might not look quite as uniform or nice, but that never was the point.
Season's Greeting from vagabondsurf.com. |
