It was my first year on the Rock. Oahu. I was living in a chicken coop—literally, a goddamn converted chicken coop—out in Haleiwa on the North Shore. My first two months were a rough, beautiful, and completely necessary “karmic adjustment.” I was broke. I was sleeping on a couch. I’d screwed up a deposit, didn’t get paid, and I was down to counting my water bottles. The universe was teaching me a lesson in humility, and I was trying to cheat on the exam.
I needed a hobby. I needed an escape. So I went to Waikiki and bought a used, inflatable sea kayak. A huge, heavy, rubber mess of a vessel. I got it for a song, figuring if I hated it, I could resell it to some other desperate tourist.
I dragged this beast to the beach. Unpacked it. It had nine goddamn chambers. It took 160 pumps per chamber. By the time I had the thing inflated, I was nearly dead from exhaustion. I looked like a man trying to inflate the Hindenburg with his own lungs.
I didn’t know anything about Hawaii. I just looked up “best place to kayak” on the internet, and it said “The Mokes.” The Mokulua Islands. Two beautiful, jagged silhouettes off the coast of Lanikai.
So I packed up. I had an ice chest filled with wine and beer. I had my music. I looked like I was going on a luxury cruise for one.
A woman on the beach, a local mom watching her kids, she saw me. She saw the sweat, the rubber boat, the cooler.
“Where are you going with all that?” she asked, her voice full of that quiet, motherly concern that usually precedes a 911 call.
“Going to the Mokes,” I said, confident as a man walking off a cliff.
“Have you ever been?” she asked.
“Never.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “There are waves. Currents. You have to deal with the swell.”
“I got this,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
I ignored her. Of course I did.
I launched. The water was turquoise glass. Absolutely gorgeous. I saw my first sea turtle, gliding underneath me like a prehistoric angel. I stopped, cracked a beer, and just drifted. It was Christmas Day. My first Christmas alone. No girlfriend, no kids, no family calling me up. Everyone was pissed at me for leaving. They were drinking sour grapes; I was the goddamn winemaker.
I paddled out. And then I saw what the woman was talking about.
The Sandbar.
The swell wraps around the back of the island, splits in two, and then slams back together right in front of the beach. It’s a headbutt. A violent, beautiful collision of water. Six-foot waves coming from the left, six-foot waves from the right, meeting in the middle and shooting twelve feet straight up in the air. A thunderous, spraying, chaotic gate of hell you have to pass through to get to paradise.
I watched a guy in a pontoon boat with a golden retriever ride the swell, time it perfectly, and slide in. It looked fun. It looked dangerous.
I waited. I watched the rhythm. Slam. Recess. Slam. Recess.
I saw my window. The “Moses” moment. The water pulled back, the path opened, and I paddled like a man possessed. I slid right through the center, the water deep and declining fast, and I landed on the sandbar. Safe.
I pulled the kayak up. I sat there, on this little island off the coast of another little island, blaring my music, and I cracked another beer. It was accelerating. Scary as shit. But beautiful.
I sucked down a beer in happiness. Then another. Then another. I sat there, pondering the absurdity of it all. A few months ago, I had no money. I lived in Bend, Oregon. Now? I’m on a rock in the Pacific, drunk on Christmas, king of a deserted island.
I watched the other people leave. They had a technique. Jump in the kayak, paddle hard, beat the wave. One by one, they vanished back towards the mainland.
And then, I was alone.
The sun started to set. The beautiful, golden light turned to gray, then to a deep, bruising purple. I drank another beer. I missed my family. I missed my grandmother. I missed my father. I missed the life I had burned to the ground. I cried. I cried for the loneliness, for the fear, for the joy of surviving the shit I’d been through. I cursed the Hawaiian gods for pushing my buttons.
And then, the beer was gone. And the light was gone.
It was pitch black. No streetlights. No moon. Just me, a rubber boat, and the sound of two oceans colliding in the dark.
The swell hadn’t gone down. If anything, it sounded angrier. The same gate of hell I came through was now the only way out. And I was drunk.
“If I flip this thing,” I thought, “I die.” No life jacket. No one knows I’m here. No lifeguard tower. Just the sharks and the dark.
So I did the only thing I could do. I packed up. I tightened the straps. I turned off the music. I dragged the kayak to the water’s edge. My knees hurt. I practiced my jump—it wasn’t going to be graceful. It was going to be a “Special Olympics” maneuver, a desperate scramble for survival.
I counted the waves. Crash… 1… 2… 3… The pattern was about 25 seconds. Best case, 40. I decided to go on 30.
I waited for the crash. The spray missed my face in the darkness.
Now.
I dragged the heavy, rubber beast into the water. I was knee-deep. I rolled my drunk ass into the cockpit. No time for finesse.
And I paddled.
Good God, I paddled. I dug that plastic blade into the black water like I was trying to dig a hole to China. Paddle, paddle, paddle. My heart was hammering in my throat.
And then, I saw it. Or felt it. A shadow rising up out of the dark. The right hook. The wave was coming.
I didn’t stop. I just kept the rhythm. Don’t freeze. Don’t freeze.
I didn’t know if I was out of the kill zone. And then, whoosh. The wave hit the back of the kayak. My boat rose up, four feet in the air, the nose pointing down into the abyss. I felt the compaction, the power of the ocean right behind my spine.
And then… it pushed me.
It didn’t flip me. It grabbed me and shoved me forward, a massive, wet, terrifying hand, spraying me with foam, pushing me out of the danger zone and into the deep channel.
I screamed. A pure, primal scream of terror and triumph.
I made it.
I was drunk. It was dark. I was exhausted. I paddled back to the inlet, found my car by the grace of God. I had to break down the kayak, which was now filled with water and sand and weighed about 200 pounds. I dragged it to the vehicle, packed it up, and drove 40 minutes back to the chicken coop.
Merry Christmas.
I had seen the great white whale. I had challenged the ocean and won. I wasn’t dead yet.
And as I drove home, thinking about that wave, that near-miss in the dark, I just started to laugh. Pure, unadulterated laughter.
Another near miss in a life full of them.
