LONE STAR SALT
Chasing Surf, Sex, and Sanctuary in Texas
By Nathaniel Riverhorse Nakadate

The Texas coastline droops gently like a Viagra-free appendage, meandering in an arc that, oddly enough, leaves it prone to windswells from various angles usually created by fronts pushing down across the Plains. Hurricanes also do the trick. And occasionally, a low moves into the Gulf and whips things up into a promising froth. The sole question at hand here is, obviously, could there really be decent surf in Texas... besides the Dana Brown-exposed wakes from gluttonous, Dubya-era tankers? 

Although I was born in Austin and spent virtually my entire youth there, I hauled ass to the East Coast and lived for years on end in Saint Augustine, FL -- where I taught Hemingway to pubescent Lit classes and played guitar in an endless haze of biker-infested juke-joints. Definitely in heat, I eventually found myself gassing up the truck for the Lone Star State to chase down a famous ballerina who declared all bets on for me. My plan was to spend a week living out of my truck, chasing down Southern waves and exploring the terrain, while rolling through Houston to make a private appearance at The Nutcracker. Amen, baby. 

I finally caught my first good whiff of the salty Gulf an hour past Galveston, as the afternoon sun ran towards gloaming. With a battered 6'6" Rawson roundpin and a Yater Spoon tucked away on the racks, the choice was simple. I greased the Yater and danced an awkward, sliding sandal waltz up over the dunes, where a little swell revealed itself to be around shoulder-high. But there seemed to be about eight repeating sandbars, and the water was an odd chocolate hue. If you haven't been to this part of the Gulf, you've probably never seen anything break quite like this. But yes, indeed there was surf, and I hastily embarked for a baptism with the Spoon. 

Galveston has a Key West sort of rainbow warrior vibe -- lots of starving artists with grandiose mustaches grown in full glory. The action in town is centered on the seawall -- about 20 feet of vertical concrete -- where there are various beach mercantiles, worn-down restaurant storefronts, and coffee shops. At night, a seedy pier at the Flagship Hotel is lit up enough for a surfer to catch a session, but rarely have I not been solo after midnight. There are also numerous rows of congruent rock jetties, where Mike Doyle (in his poignant book Morning Glass) infamously wound up ripping out the rear of his trunks to fire the moon to live television crews and throngs of stunned onlookers. Galveston, where the legend's debacle occurred, is about 70 miles northeast of where I am today.  

The lineup has arranged itself into a spread-out maelstrom of characters, and all of them seem to be packing shit-eating grins of unbridled joy, some even waving hello. Wha... friendliness? Caught off guard, I even wave back to the boys. Kenny Bradshaw came from here? That is just too amusing. I settle into a lazy routine on the farthest outside sandbar, milking reforms to the inside whip, or "chocolate milking" I should say. The water has a fine warmth to it, and tastes a hell of a lot saltier than the Atlantic, or any ocean for that matter. Affable Texans make ample conversation; certainly the boys on a Saturday morning session at Pipe could learn a thing or two from these boisterous-but-gracious gentlemen. I've discovered that oftentimes the most surf-starved locales have the best attitudes, and this proves to be the deal here. 

Like anywhere, Texas surfers look for jetties and piers to bring some semblance of shape to their muse. Where I'm surfing this morning, Freeport, (around latitude 29, if you have to figure it out), is marked by a pair of parallel jetties which embrace a wide shipping channel. With the winds clocking hard into the east jetty that I'm surfing, I start to get a little antsy ruminating about sandbar scenarios on the protected inside of the west end. Sooner rather than later, I climb onto the barnacle-encrusted granite rocks and leap into the drifty channel for what appears to be about a 100-yard paddle. I end up racing a rusted shrimp boat that has me in her crosshairs, which definitely lends a little speed to my arm rotation. I choose not to think about the schools of hammerheads, which are notorious for ranging 15-feet-plus 'round these parts. 

Gingerly sliming my way across the next jetty, I'm rewarded with a delicious little view. Nothing showing on the outside anymore at all. But a clean, chunky, lil' inside lefthander is thumping away across various shell-strewn sandbanks. Nobody's around, not a soul. I line up a few feet off the rocks and find some high-line runs to be surprisingly fun. A couple head-high jewels even double up on themselves to make things a bit more interesting. "I could spend the entire afternoon doing this," I mutter aloud. And I do. I end up having to urgently paddle back across in the waning light, and I fumble around the dunes for a while until I can locate the truck. I crawl into the back of the camper top and turn on the dim, nine-volt-powered dome light. My onboard subsistence consists of a few wisely stashed leftover breakfast burritos and some lemon-rind-loaded water.  

How easy it would be to make the drive a couple hours north into Houston, surprise my ballerina, and then spend the evening in much more comforting circumstances, but instead, I achingly defer for tomorrow night's big plans and opt for touching base on the cell. "Can you hear me now?" "Yeah, but I'd rather feel you now." 

I wake up restlessly around a quarter to five and choose to aim the truck down towards the Corpus Christi area. I can tell from the maps that there's another similar setup there, and the beaches appear to face the brunt of the swell more, with a little island stretch just off the regular coastline. I pull over briefly and buy a quiver of local peaches from a roadside stand -- $3 for eight peaches, breakfast of champions to Vonnegut and me. The Texas highways are lined with more wildflowers than just the spiraling bluebonnet. I pass horsemints; creamy magnolias, and mountain pink, whose leaves were dried by early pioneers to reduce fevers. I've got a fever all right... for an Irish ballerina. There's even an abundance of agaves, which provide a feast for a variety of birds, bats, and butterflies, and more notoriously, provide the fire for tequila. 

I make it to the pass by lunch and once again find myself on the edge of a rock cluster lined with fervent fishermen. While preparing to jump out for another channel swim to get to a little righthand wall the binoculars have clued me in to, clusters of people gather nearby and are ever-so-kind as to shout out miscellaneous remarks about the millions of sharks they're certain traverse this stretch. Even I start to wonder, but I suppose after spending three months alone surfing in Africa, anything else is a standard mental exercise. The channel current washes the dried peach guts and juices from my forearms as I plod away with an eye on the prize. The entourage of morbidly fascinated onlookers, who are actually placing cash bets on my possible demise, soon become my distant taillights.  

The wave is only around stomach-high, but peels off juicily and occasionally runs fast. If you've never driven a single-fin across a reeling, inside zipper, you may want to investigate this a bit. It is seriously good shit. Eventually, the tide comes in within a couple hours and turns the ruler's edge into a closeout bust. After a plastic water jug shower, I pull over to a beaten-down Texas diner and snag some homegrown spiced-out barbecue, sweet potato fries, and a cold dark ale before pushing hard north.  

With time, persistence, and aplomb, I come to understand a few key elements of the Texas layout. Following the coast down, Galveston, Freeport, Matagorda, Corpus Christi, and South Padre are the major hubs. The continental shelf gets deeper as Mexico's border nears in the headlights, delivering a much-needed increase in swell strength. I also discover it's possible to ride a south swell on the upper coast, and when a cold front storms through from the Western Plains, then make the three to five-hour drive to Padre to catch a fresh swell from another angle. There is no main coastal road in Texas, only highways and offshoots, strangely similar to Baja. 

For me, Matagorda, a nine-mile stretch of barrier island, turns out to be the gem of the coast. It's completely uninhabited and void of structure, save a few obsessed striper fishermen and wayfaring shrimp trawlers. Taking a 4x4 and trekking among the tall dunes for a few hours can lead you to steep, shell-bank drop-offs, where solidly delineated sandbars rise out of deep water. Surprisingly enough, I've now caught a number of wintry, head-high barrels there alone, while a wood fire blazed away by the truck with foil packed salmon fillet and russet potatoes waiting in the embers. 

The next morning finds me sheepishly awakening in a bedroom filled with a couple empty wine glasses, a conspicuously sandy wood floor, and the ballerina. She lets me know I can catch a show again later that night, or see her afterwards if I want to make a run back to the coastline.  

Where in the hell is the wax? Unfurl the map, hit the weather radio... Breaker 1-9. I'm southbound again. 

THAT SMELL
By Jon Steele

The smell of salt in the air is strong during this humid, predawn surf check. The wind is up and so is the surf. Without having slept at all, I stand in the rain to bum a ride to the beach. It's a hurricane swell much like my first one -- when my 15-year-old mind would race with thoughts of waves. The sand is packed tight by the rain, but that smell is what I remember most about growing up as a surf rat in Texas, a place that means so many things to me: 4-wheelin', hunting, fishing, tanker surfing, punchy beachbreaks, and outta' control hurricane swells. It means hot, drunken days at the beach, huge bonfires in the dunes while hiding from the cops, and sandboarding. It means 5:30 a.m. trips to Laredo to hit up 30-foot ditches because it gets too hot to skateboard by eight. It means quick trips to Mex, where I took my first photo. It means mosh pits inside a Suburban while doing 80 on the freeway with no driver, pulling skeet at the gun club where I once worked, and spending the night in parking lots to compete in waist-high slop the next morning.  

We have our own version of the California dream here, just with shittier waves.  

Basically, 'round here it's "if you love something, let it go... if it comes back, gaff it and throw it in the ice chest." With novelty surf, gaming potential, and an overall easygoing attitude, Texas is a fine place to call home. The variety of hunting alone is enough to convert most -- pig hunts with plenty o' alcohol, deer hunting with a rifle or (my personal preference) a bow-and-arrow, and miles and miles of open land. But it's the beaches where my heart really lies -- where my dad taught me how to drive, fish, and respect the land; where we take our girls to make out, where we hang out and get wasted. It is here where I was first bitten by the surf bug, at age 12. 

I'm from Corpus Christi, a bay town with surf potential on the opposite side of the barrier island. As opposed to Galveston Island and the chain that reaches north towards the Mississippi River, these South Padre islands create massive marsh estuaries to the south, while Galveston is marked by several piers and jetties. This is the slimmest part of the Texas swell window, but when the right storm brews in the Gulf, Galveston can claim the cleanest spots on the coast. Unfortunately, us Corpus guys never really go up there except to ride tanker wakes. Like my friends, I used to blow off that concept as a myth, but found out later that it isn't a tall tale, but a shoulder-high wave that goes on for four miles, and one of the most amazing things I've ever done in my life.  

South Padre is two hours south of my homebreak, but usually holds the best surf year-round. "S.P. I." as the locals call it, is known for its lime-blue water due to the Mississippi filtering out, and the waves can get really, really good. With the water hue and dark rain clouds psychedelically contrasting the whitewater, it's a cosmic surfer's paradise. And with a plethora of hookers, booze, and warm water, it's also a Spring Breaker's paradise.  

Don't get me wrong -- the Third Coast is fickle, and you have to put your time in to get it good. Onshore wind is usually a good thing here; in fact, it must be 30 mph-plus to produce shoulder-high surf. Northerns blow the remaining surf flat in no time at all. And it's not an oddity to have a lightning storm chase you out of the water while golf-ball-sized hail and waterspouts force you to hunker down in the truck until the system passes. The long, summertime flat spells can be tough, too, but with them come the sea sculpture parties which house a healthy music scene. Punk/ metal bands like Festus, The Wrong Crowd, Loser, Brutal Juice, and D.R.I. came up nearby, so we still get to experience big-name groups in small, up-close venues. With it being too hot to skate during the day, I recall days of quickly learning how to scurf (ride behind a boat on a surfboard) between fishing holes.  

Winters, on the other hand, are blustery and cold with major currents to deal with. We use the "drift method" -- getting dropped off by a car at one pier while a friend drives to the next one three miles away, then drifting back to pick up the abandoned car and do it all over again. Violent, changing weather is normal. And like with most East Coast states, late-summer/ early-fall is the time to be here, clearly evident by the record 2005 Hurricane Season. 

Now that I'm living in California, my trips home usually coincide with hunting season. And upon each and every return, I'm greeted by that smell. And that smell immediately evokes what the Lone Star State means to me. With such a large variety of hunters, oil workers, skaters, rockers, commercial fisherman, and wildlife guides all calling themselves surfers, the Texas coastal community is a spicy, flavorful gumbo of characters... which sometimes makes me wonder why I ever left.

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