Pancakes at the Surf Cafe

Farm Kids, Northeast Winds, Skimmers Skimming, and Surfer Girls

Farm Kids, Northeast Winds, Skimmers Skimming, and Surfer Girls

Kelly’s house—midcentury rancher bungalow with wood paneled walls, navy painted plywood cabinets, and asbestos siding—is our central meeting place: the Surf Cafe.

We gather around the wooden table pushed against the wall looking over a breakfast counter to the modest kitchen where we’ve been provided with so many post-sunrise session blueberry pancakes and handwashed mugs of Moka pot coffee. The girls who have helped me film are there.

There’s Sam—bright, powerful, two years into surfing seriously, like me. She lives in the one-bedroom duplex on the corner, two houses down. (I live in the one-bedroom apartment on the other side.)

There’s Jessie—Santa Cruz surfer, long and lean, relocated to the East Coast and waltzing wwoofer turned organic farm-certifier. She’s a fellow goofy foot, but we have so many rights here, I struggled to go frontside for a long time. She saw me pulling out of a left once, and yelled as she paddled, “What happened?!”

I said, “I can’t go left!”

She settled into the waist high peeler, right shoulder pushing her down the line, and smiled back at me, saying, “It’ll change your life.”

There’s Hannah—Carolina through and through, our CrossFit turned surfer who will never miss first light, never miss a birthday, never miss a moment to leave a card and a flower on a front stoop for any occasion. She’s our athlete, our legs, our hair, and our motivator.

And then there’s Kelly.

I ask about something inconsequential over pancakes in the Surf Café kitchen, “Oh, what day was that?”

She squints at me to say—Why are we talking about things that have happened?

And with as little energy as she could ration, responded, “Mm, it was the day we had northeast winds.”

I looked up. I was still pretty new to the Mermaid Commune.

Everyone kept eating—nobody noticed that anything of note was said.

Kelly is pure muscle, pure moment, blue eyed, ocean bodied, dreaming-of-surfing surfer.

“The day we had northeast winds!!!” I said.

When I first moved closer to the coast, I was impressed that people actually knew the dates of hurricane season—I didn’t. But here on the island, the wind is measured daily, momentarily. It’s the wind and the swell and the period and the tide and—It’s a constant observation of what is happening right here and how we fit into it: on the island, our end of the island, our access, our break.

There’s a bird sanctuary on the southern tip—skimmers, terns, even American oystercatchers nest there. I like to walk out for sunset. I get to see that I live in an ecosystem. That’s what I need. The blanket flowers, prickly pear, and grass going to seed in the dunes; the dunes; the bluetail marsh rabbits; the sand crabs, dolphins, turtle tracks at dawn; the inlet, the current, the tide; the skimmer low, breaking the surface of the water with pointed open beak. Skimmer!

I am a renter on borrowed time. Every day I wake here feels impossible. Every day a 75-year-old bungalow is allowed to stand feels impossible. I could not be tempted to believe this is mine.

The chilled northeast wind angling onto us carries a whisper and a howl—you cannot buy me.

When Ben worked for pennies at the state port loading and unloading international cargo ships, there was no schedule. Was the tide low enough for the gantry crane to reach the port side of the barge? Then it was time to unload.

Often we’d have a sweaty beer and agree—They’d stop the tides if they could.

I am a humble participant in my current ecosystem with a reminder for the Beach House Industrial Complex:

You couldn’t own that/ I couldn’t own that

And while I’m rich in habitat, it’s my current human ecosystem that is my greatest joy. After spending a lifetime searching out and obsessing over intentional communities, I’ve found myself unintentionally in one of the healthiest, most bonafide communities yet.

Where did all the millennial wwoofers land? They’re living in a surf commune on an island off the East Coast. Read: I’m friends with my neighbors. OK, there are three of us former farm dwellers. Still!

One of the first times I met Kelly, I pulled my 2002 Nissan Frontier into the Crystal Pier parking lot with my wavestorm foam board hanging out the bed.

“Man, I love a little stick-shift pick up,” she said. “I used to have one just like it.”

“We had one at the farm where I lived,” I told her. “And I wanted one ever since.”

“That’s how I ended up with mine!” she laughed back.

Now farmless, we’re neighbors with a common interest, a common all-consuming goal: to surf as many waves as possible, as well as possible.

We have rituals—we gather at sunrise, sunset; we wave check; surf; cook; eat; celebrate; grieve. We do what we can to meet each other’s needs. In this commune, everybody does the dishes.

Sarah Fuller Art/ used with permission

We want to protect our beaches, our ecosystem; we want to make our beaches equitable and accessible; we want to protect the rights of the living. Through Mermaid Surf, we work to be physically and mentally strong, courageous, capable women. Surfing with women has wholly increased my confidence, agency, joy, and conviction.

In some ways, we all stumbled into this community, but more honestly, every decision we’ve made allowed us to say yes to living here, in this way, when it arose. It meant saying no to opportunities and relationships that were not meant for us. It meant learning to surf—something hard and unpredictable that requires discipline, determination, and being malleable.

I want to keep living honestly, keep getting to the heart of the matter, keep witnessing the ecosystem, the way things are. I want to keep documenting human connection and joy and spirit. I want to celebrate that every wholesome and beautiful, simple, loving act is built on a lifetime of values and the choice to stay open and living.

This is to celebrate friendship and surfing, and it’s to say: Open to your life, and it will open to you. Be courageous in all your choices. Unexpected gifts await you.

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