Leo Carr-uh-oh, Drowning (almost) as a Jr. Lifeguard

I almost drowned as a Jr. Lifeguard. Go figure.

During one of our first summers in California, my parents enlisted me in the Jr. Lifeguards at Leo Carillo. I was 12 or 13, in the midst of puberty, and completely insecure about my body and its tendency to react overtly to gorgeous girls in baywatching suits. Sorry, Baywatch-like bathing suits. It’s interesting to see how much of a paradise this might seem to other kids. Hot girls, the beach, being little lifeguards, getting in shape, and... girls. Aside from almost drowning… and every moment walking around constantly worried about one physiological aspect or another, ...it was ...great?

There are a few sections to Leo Carrillo. The point everyone surfs is the section can see from the highway. The wave breaks off a huge rock, and surfers are known to be fairly territorial due to its consistency, not unlike the sharks that are known to sometimes show up (Dun dun dun).

On the Northern side of Leo Carrillo's surfing point lay the 'beachiest' part of Leo Carrillo. It extended to Heavens and Staircase before reaching the next spot visible from PCH, County Line. Both Heavens and Staircase were sandy beaches with shallow declines into water with annoying medium to large size rocks for one's feet to discover in painful surprise. But all this was easier to deal with than the section of Leo Carrillo that lay in our routine.

Here, a rocky beach descended into rocky water into what was a ....Rocky ... like... shore.. break (Rimshot! ...See what I did there?).

Shore breaks occur when the wave, at its highest point, slams against a steeply ascending beach. This kind of barrier between swimmer and shore has been known to throw those unprepared head first into shore with potentially paralyzing or even fatal results. Most beach breaks occur further out from shore as the sea bottom rises gradually. Getting caught in a wave merely sucks you a bit and throws you back into a similar spot, back towards shore. At that point you can get out or stand or do whatever.

The difference in navigating a shore break is that it takes considered timing to get through, and difficulty increases exponentially on bigger days. Also, the whole paralysis/death thing. Getting into the water is easy. While standing on your feet, breathing easy, you can pick the moment to launch yourself into the quickly deepening water. It's actually quite exhilarating to hurl your body over the final wave of an incoming set. As you leap over the quickly passing crest, you find nothing but empty space and can feel the slightest sensation of what jumping off a mountain might feel like as you splash down in the space between waves.
 

 

 

The waters around Leo Carrillo tended to be a bit more lively, with Seals, Dolphins, Jelly Fish, Kelp, a Sun Fish we actually took for a Great White at one point, and the occasional actual Great White. Throw all that together with some weird currents and the previously discussed shore break and its potential spinal injuries...Well .. All in all, it was a bit much, almost as if I were... a ...fish.. out of.. water... rimshot (get it?!?! I'm the fish. It was meeeee). I didn’t really have anyone there with me or I don’t remember which friend was there, so they couldn't have been very friendly.

Anyways. Onwards... to drowning. It definitely happened when I was swimming, rimshot. Of that, I'm quite sure. From what I remember everyone got called back to the beach for some reason. I was already too tired to keep up for one reason or another. It was a fairly big day, which made everything harder. The larger swell height increased the amount of energy you'd have to use to get anywhere. Currents are stronger and change more rapidly on bigger days. Sets that day were sometimes 5-8 waves at a time, rather than the normally sheepish Socal 1-4ish, at 2-3ft.

My exhaustion had made it difficult to time my efforts with the swell. I was waiting out past the break to angle in at the right time to try and get the last swell of a set, to burst through the break before another set starts up. I liked my neck, and I didn't want to break it. So I was taking my time. After a set or three, I finally committed. Not only did the wave not carry me far, but it put me exactly where I had been trying to avoid. To make things worse, the set wasn't over.

Apparently this final set was an overachiever, and as the 3rd wave battered me I was nearing complete exhaustion. I began asking myself why my fellow Jr. lifeguards weren't attempting to ...guard my life, even if doing so as juniors. The universal signal for ‘I need help’ was basically just a wave… and after having waved a bunch, the question changed to why weren't the actual lifeguards guarding my life?? It seemed like they had forgotten me, that they all just kind of kept doing their thing. I think this was the closest I had come to death at that point in my life.

After, I don't know how long, I finally got far enough into shore for my feet to find some rocks and enough traction to get up and out. I crawled up the steep rocky beach to a spot that was more sand than stone and basically collapsed for like 15 minutes or so. I was angry that people hadn’t come to help me. Maybe the instructors wanted me to fend for myself, to show me I could get out of it, or use me as a lesson of what not to do for everyone that had made it. It’s hard to believe no one saw me. It felt like I wasn't worth their effort.

During the rough and tumble of being thrown around under the waves, I had kind of just, let go. By the 3rd, 4th, and 5th waves I remember picturing myself as a piece of sand. I visualized my body getting tossed to and fro amidst swirl of sand and stone.  I hadn't ever been so aware of having so little control over my body. My choices were irrelevant. I wanted air, I wanted to be on that beach, I wanted to be the kid with huge muscles, hitting on the girls with their bathingwatch suits. I think this is why it was so troubling to me, why this memory has had staying power.

In the break there was so much movement, noise, and power. I was just another thing in its midst, caught up, arbitrarily. I, like all matter, am organized dust, waiting to become disordered again. I already hated living for the most part. But after having been so out of control in so many ways, so suddenly, I felt a futility that I hadn't felt before, or at least, as acutely. There was an obvious frailty to life that I hadn't appreciated. But more than anything I learned through that summer that being out of control is traumatic, whether by wave, or even just through how I imagined others saw me.

 

I look back on that time and see that I lacked the language to address the challenges before me. I didn't have the physiological language, the muscle memory, or the endurance that Ocean Swimming requires. There were movements (physiological words) I hadn't spoken, used often enough, or even learned. One Ocean language that works with the grain of the Ocean is surfing. Surfing harnesses the wave and uses it as a blank piece of paper to write on. Kiteboarding, a recent innovation of surfing, parasailing, and wind surfing now allows people to go farther from shore and catch larger air than any other means. From what we can understand, humans now have the capacity to destroy the earth's capacity to house life merely by how we eat, drink, and move around. No other being has ever possessed such a capacity. No other force can stop it, aside from the oft hoped for zombie apocalypse, or perhaps the return of long lost Alien creators. Thankfully unlike that washing machine of a beach that took me and held me and controlled me so definitively... we can choose to loosen our grip on the most detrimental things to life.