It was the trip of a lifetime. Several months paddling the Amazon, trying to eat without being eaten. It almost all went to plan. But when Bruce Frey and Ed Welch found themselves being trailed through the jungle by a jaguar at sunset, their only choice was to take refuge in a tree and hope they could survive the night.

The post Up a Tree Without a Paddle appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

This story update is part of the șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌę°ä±ôČčČőČőŸ±łŠČő, a series highlighting the best writing we’ve ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Read “The Same River Twice,” by David Quammen, here.

In the grainy Zoom window, I see Quammen’s walls of shelves, heaving with books, and also a large, empty glass tank.

“I’m in here with Boots the python,” he says, as if it’s totally banal to share office space with a large snake. “That’s his tank.”

Ah, the tank is not empty. That’s cool. And a little terrifying.

“Oh, he’s a sweetheart,” Quammen says. “My wife, Betsy, came downstairs one day about five years ago and said, ‘Don’t get mad at me, but—’ You know how those conversations begin. Betsy says, ‘Don’t get mad at me, but I’ve adopted a python.’ Betsy and I are snake people. I said, ‘What species?’ That’s kind of what passes for our collaborative decision-making.”

Boots is a “very gentle” ball python, Quammen says. “He, like most of our dogs and like the cat, is a rescue.” When Quammen lets Boots crawl around the office, the snake will sometimes slither up and into hidden spaces in the shelves.

“Their favorite habitat is rocky walls. A ball python can go into a niche in a cliff or a mud bank and wedge itself in there like a ball, and it makes it hard for a leopard or a baboon to pull it out and eat it. Boots wedges himself in my bookshelf, and I have to delicately figure out: Which book do I take out next in a way that does not hurt him, bend any of his scales in the wrong direction, to loosen him up a little bit? Eventually, he just sort of falls into my hands.

“He’s only bitten me once, and it was by accident. He was very embarrassed.”

We digress, perhaps. But a conversation with Quammen always contains multitudes: Darwinism, connubial negotiation and bliss, dedication to the literary and the true, and a fierce and gregarious curiosity, with Montana often in the wings. Let’s digress a bit more: had he not bought a used Volkswagen bus in England, and had George McGovern won the U.S. presidency in 1972, it’s very possible Quammen might never have ended up in Montana at all.

He grew up in Cincinnati and got into Yale, where he studied literature and wrote a novel, . He then won a Rhodes Scholarship and headed off to Oxford to earn a graduate degree, writing his thesis on the works of William Faulkner. He obtained the VW bus with money earned from the novel. But in May 1972, Quammen recalls, Richard Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam, and “within about 24 hours I left the Rhodes without permission and came back to the U.S. to work for McGovern’s [anti-war] campaign. After McGovern was squashed in November, I promptly went back to England and found that the head of the Rhodes Scholarships hadn’t written me off.”

Quammen got his Oxford degree and then convinced his friend Dennis to ship the VW to a dockyard in New York. Following an unsatisfying stint in Berkeley, California, Quammen decided to drive the bus “to Montana, filled with Penguin Classics and a portable electric typewriter. And a very cheap fly rod, which I soon ran over and replaced with a better cheap fly rod. I arrived in Missoula on September 12, 1973. A significant day in my life.”

OUTSIDE: I came to work at the magazine the year after you wrote “The Same River Twice.” I don’t know if you remember, I was your fact-checker back in those days. I read this essay, and from that moment on I loved your writing. The bones of the story have everything to do with how you came to șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.
QUAMMEN: In 1981, Steve Byers, E. Jean Carroll, and I were all trying to break into magazine writing from Ennis, Montana, the little town we were living in. I was 33; they were a few years older. We heard that the editor of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű magazine was coming to Montana to schmooze with writers, and we thought it’d be great if we could get a shot at meeting that guy and pitch stories to him.

From a phone booth in Bozeman, with a handful of quarters, I cold-called șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű in Chicago and asked for John Rasmus, editor in chief. My heart was racing. I was nervous. My mission was to say, “If you come to Ennis, Steve and I will take you fly-fishing on the Madison River.”

This young, casual voice comes on the line: “Hi, this is John.” I say, “Hi, John Rasmus. You don’t know me.” I do my little spiel, and he says, “Oh, OK. Cool.”

Steve and I taught him to cast a fly line in my side yard. Then we took him fishing, and we made sure that he caught some fish. By about sunset on this stretch of the Madison, he was landing a 16-inch rainbow trout.

We took him back to the farmhouse where Steve and Jean lived, and we cooked steaks and drank whiskey. By the end of the evening, we were all best friends. At some point I said: I got a story idea for you. I want to write a piece about what’s good about mosquitoes. John said, “Is anything good?” But in the sober light of day he said, “I’m assigning this to you, right?” I mailed the essay off in a manila envelope and thought, What’s going to happen?

What happened was he accepted it and offered you a job as columnist for a slot already known as Natural Acts.
That was the only time, I think, that I ever actually pitched șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű an idea. After that I’d just send him a piece, usually on time, but at the last minute: “Here’s an essay on sea cucumbers.” “Here’s an essay on giant Pacific octopus.” “Here’s an essay on why crows get bored.” Which is because they’re too intelligent for their station in life.

When I was doing the column, I tended always to look for some kind of synergy between elements that were unexpectedly combined, but when you put them together
 well, son of a gun. I had taken some courses in zoology at the University of Montana when I lived in Missoula. I had taken a course in entomology, another one in aquatic entomology, and another one in ichthyology. I was interested in how spring creeks worked, the fact that they maintain a constant temperature and therefore have a 12-months-of-the-year growing season and can be very productive. This creek behind Steve and Jean’s house was a spring creek.

And then Steve and Jean came to an end. I had so revered their union that, when they split, it gutted me. Then, several years later, I was noodling up a column.

I had that spring creek idea, but it was only half of a column. I needed another half. I needed the yang to that yin. That creek that I fished on with Steve, and the end of their marriage and the end of our special moment, the three of us in that town, became the yang of this piece. I always thought of that time as—there’s a wonderful sentence at the very end of , Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of Paris. He says, “This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”

One thing I enjoy about the essay is that there are no identifiers—I don’t know where it is except that it’s in Montana. As I reread it recently, I thought about how we are now so information saturated. This piece is almost allegorical—the opposite of online culture.
It’s a very particular, very personal story, but I wanted it to have some sort of universal dimension. I wanted it to have legs. I want to give myself credit for an instinct that not naming the town, not naming the people, not naming the specifics would give it a little bit of permanence. I was describing science with great care and, I hope, precision, but also connecting it with things that were very unscientific—either artistic or simply emotional.

I love that șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű was a place where you could do that, and everybody had the good sense to keep letting you do it.
I did between 152 and 155 columns, something like that. All those wonderful people at șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű just letting me do any damn crazy thing, as long as I could make it work and get it in on time. It was a fool’s paradise.

But you started out wanting to write fiction, right?
I wanted to be a novelist. I had taken one science course in college, a biology course, and it was not a good biology course. Didn’t even mention Charles Darwin.

I discovered Faulkner when I was a sophomore at Yale, and I became obsessed with his work. I studied him with a great teacher and a great friend to me, Robert Penn Warren, who knew Faulkner, and who was himself a southerner and a towering American man of letters. When I was a senior, I was rewriting what became my first published novel, To Walk the Line.

But I was a middle-class white male from a happy childhood in Ohio. The world didn’t need that guy to be a novelist. When I got to Montana I started reading nonfiction. Voraciously. For the first time.

What prompted you to do that?
I had always been interested in the natural world, but I had been in New Haven and then Oxford—not places where the natural world is very strongly present. I got to Montana, and I got back to the natural world. I was interested in feeling the cold and the snow and feeling the flow of the rivers. But also, I was interested in thinking about it. I was interested in ecology and evolutionary biology. I started reading Darwin. I started reading Heraclitus. I started reading Herodotus. I started reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I started reading every which way: Loren Eiseley and J.B.S. Haldane and Mary Kingsley and Annie Dillard and others. And I saw people doing things with nonfiction that were every bit as creative and imaginative as fiction, and much more creative and imaginative than 97 percent of novels.

I want to ask about your books on pandemics, which are both highly literary and diligently reported. You were prescient on this topic, having published , your 2012 book about the rise in zoonotic diseases that transmit dangerously from animals to humans. A decade later came Breathless, in which you argue persuasively for the zoonotic theory of COVID-19 and against the theory that the virus escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan, China.   
One story is the imagined story of a lab leak, and the other is the inferential story of a zoonotic spillover. There is a lot of empirical evidence to support but not finally prove the idea that COVID originated with a zoonotic spillover. There’s a whole historical and scientific context for that. There are pieces of immediate evidence that support that idea.

There’s no empirical evidence to support the lab story. But it is a very, very powerful, enticing story. And that is why it has legs, in my opinion. One of the things that they argue on that side is, “Well, if this came from a zoonotic spillover from a bat, why haven’t we found the original virus in the bat? It’s been four years now. That’s very suspicious.”

Well, no. The problem is they don’t know anything about the history of zoonotic diseases. With the Marburg virus, for example, it took 41 years to find the bat. With Ebola it’s been 48 years, and we still don’t have the answer. It is not mysterious that the last section of evidence in the structure of empirical support for zoonotic spillover of COVID hasn’t been found.

Are you working on a book now?
Yeah. My desk is covered with files, files, files, books, books, and files. I’m working on a book on cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon. I’ve been incubating this book for 17 years.

How is cancer evolutionary?
There is a school of thought that I stumbled across in 2006 or 2007 that says to understand cancer, you have to understand it from a Darwinian perspective. Every tumor is a population of cells. As a tumor begins, the cells start mutating more and more. As a tumor grows, it’s a population of cells that vary from one another with genetic variation. And they’re competing. They’re competing for space. They’re competing for blood. They’re competing for oxygen, for other resources that allow them to grow. And when you have a population of variant individuals competing for resources in order to survive and replicate themselves—does that sound familiar? You turn the crank and you have evolution by natural selection.

So why does chemo so often not work? An oncologist prescribes a drug, and I don’t know how much cancer you’ve experienced in your family or your life—

I had breast cancer, and my husband died of lymphoma.
All right. Ouch. Yes. So an oncologist says, “We’re going to treat this with chemo. This is a good drug.” And the chemo knocks down the cancer for six months or so. You get some improvement. And then the cancer becomes resistant to that drug, so you’re forced to use a different drug. Why does it become resistant? For the same reason that a field of grasshoppers becomes resistant to the insecticide DDT. You hit the grasshoppers with DDT one year. You kill off 99 percent of the grasshoppers, and 1 percent of the grasshoppers happen to have genetic resistance to DDT. Two years later, your field is filled with grasshoppers again. This is cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon.

If we live long enough and are lucky enough, we’ll all die of cancer. Lucky enough because it is a result of, among other things, but importantly, the cumulative number of cell divisions that you have. But here’s a question: Why do whales not get cancer?

Whales?
It’s a mystery. It’s called . Whales live a long time, and they have lots and lots of cells. Their cells are not larger than ours, they just have more of them. If you trace a linear curve, whales should be dying of cancer in early middle age, all of them, and they’re not.

Are there any tiny animals that don’t get cancer?
Yes. The naked mole rat, which lives in burrows in the Middle East. It has hardly any fur. It’s blind. It lives underground. A naked mole rat lives to be 20 or 30. A mouse lives to be two. There are cancer biologists who have whole colonies of naked mole rats and have been studying them for 40 years.

This conversation makes me want to be huge. Or very small.
Lisa, just remember: șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű in the 1980s, that’s what it was like, when we were very young and very happy.

The post How David Quammen’s Writing Career Was Influenced by his Time Fishing in Montana appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

You’re about to read one of the șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌę°ä±ôČčČőČőŸ±łŠČő, a series highlighting the best stories we’ve ever published, along with author interviews, where-are-they-now updates, and other exclusive bonus materials. Read Lisa Chase’s interview with David Quammen about this feature here.

He never founded a philosophic school, like Plato and Pythagoras did. He didn’t want followers. He simply wrote his one book and deposited the scroll in a certain sacred building, the temple of Artemis, where the general public couldn’t get ahold of it. The book itself was eventually lost, and all that survives of it today are about a hundred fragments, which have come down secondhand in the works of other ancient writers. So his ideas are known only by hearsay. He seems to have said a lot of interesting things, some of them cryptic, some of them downright ornery, but this river comment is the one for which Heraclitus is widely remembered. The full translation is: “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.” To most people it comes across as a nice resonant metaphor, a bit of philosophic poetry. To me it is that and more.

Once, for a stretch of years, I lived in a very small town on the bank of a famous Montana river. It was famous mainly for its trout, this river, and for its clear water and abundance of chemical nutrients, and for the seasonal blizzards of emerging insects that made it one of the most rewarding pieces of habitat in North America, arguably in the world, if you happened to be a trout or fly-fisherman. I happened to be a fly-fisherman.

One species of insect in particular—one “hatch,” to use the slightly misleading term that fishermen apply to these impressive entomological events, when a few billion members of some mayfly or stone fly or caddis fly species all emerge simultaneously into adulthood and take flight over a river—gave this river an unmatched renown. The species was Pteronarcys californica, a monstrous but benign stone fly that grew more than two inches long and carried a pinkish-orange underbelly for which it had gotten the common name salmonfly. These insects, during their three years of development as aquatic larvae, could survive only in a river that was cold, pure, fast-flowing, rich in dissolved oxygen, and covered across its flat bottom with boulders the size of bowling balls, among which the larvae would live and graze. The famous river offered all those conditions extravagantly, and so P. californica flourished there like it did nowhere else. Trout flourished in turn.

When the clouds of P. californica took flight, and mated in air, and then began dropping back onto the water, the fish fed upon them voraciously, recklessly. Wary old brown trout the size of a person’s thigh, granddaddy animals that would never otherwise condescend to feed by daylight upon floating insects, came up off the bottom for this banquet. Each gulp of P. californica was a nutritional windfall. The trout filled their bellies and their mouths and still continued gorging. Consequently, the so-called salmonfly so-called hatch on this river, occurring annually during two weeks in June, triggered by small changes in water temperature, became a wild and garish national festival in the fly-fishing year. Stockbrokers in New York, corporate lawyers in San Francisco, federal judges and star-quality surgeons and foundation presidents—the sort of folk who own antique bamboo fly rods and field jackets of Irish tweed—planned their vacations around this event. They packed their gear and then waited for the telephone signal from a guide in a shop on Main Street of the little town where I lived.

The signal would say: It’s started. Or, in more detail: Yeah, the hatch is on. Passed through town yesterday. Bugs everywhere. By now the head end of it must be halfway to Varney Bridge. Get here as soon as you can. They got here. Cab drivers and schoolteachers came too. People who couldn’t afford to hire a guide and be chauffeured comfortably in a Mackenzie boat, or who didn’t want to, arrived with dinghies and johnboats lashed to the roofs of old yellow buses. And if the weather held, and you got yourself to the right stretch of river at the right time, it could indeed be very damn good fishing.

But that wasn’t why I lived in the town. Truth be known, when P. californica filled the sky and a flotilla of boats filled the river, I usually headed in the opposite direction. I didn’t care for the crowds. It was almost as bad as the Fourth of July rodeo, when the town suddenly became clogged with college kids from a nearby city, and Main Street was ankle deep in beer cans on the morning of the fifth, and I would find people I didn’t know sleeping it off in my front yard, under the scraggly elm. The salmonfly hatch was like that, only with stockbrokers and flying hooks. Besides, there were other places and other ways to catch fish. I would take my rod and my waders and disappear to a small spring creek that ran through a stock ranch on the bottomland east of the river.

It was private property. There was no room for guided boats on this little creek, and there was no room for tweed. Instead of tweed there were sheep—usually about thirty head, bleating in halfhearted annoyance but shuffling out of my way as I hiked from the barn out to the water. There was an old swayback horse named Buck, a buckskin; also a younger one, a hot white-stockinged mare that had once been a queen of the barrel-racing circuit and hadn’t forgotten her previous station in life. There was a graveyard of rusty car bodies, a string of them, DeSotos and Fords from the Truman years, dumped into the spring creek along one bend to hold the bank in place and save the sheep pasture from turning into an island. Locally this sort of thing is referred to as the “Detroit riprap” mode of soil conservation; after a while, the derelict cars come to seem a harmonious part of the scenery. There was also an old two-story ranch house of stucco with yellow trim. Inside lived a man and a woman, married then.

Now we have come to the reason I did live in that town. Actually there wasn’t one reason but three: the spring creek, the man, and the woman. At the time, for a stretch of years, those were three of the closest friends I’d ever had.

The post Can You Step in the Same River Twice? In Montana, I Learned the Answer. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Dear Sundog: Floating down Desolation Canyon in Utah on a private trip, pulling the oars against the upstream wind, we were passed by commercial rafts lashed together buzzing their motors to snag the primo camps. I know it’s bad form for parties to send a boat ahead to steal a camp, but this situation just demanded some sort of justice. Is it OK to break the rules to combat the commercial guide domination? —Perplexed Rower Offended by Boating Ethics

Dear PROBE: As your letter notes, the practice of splitting up a river group to “camp run” downriver is morally murky. It breeds cutthroat competition, with boaters racing each other for a shady beach instead of chilling the F out while floating lazily down the current the way the Creator intended. On many permitted river sections, the practice is explicitly banned, enforced with the threat of a ticket written up by river rangers—what Sundog used to call “paddle pigs.” What’s more, it’s downright foolhardy: if someone in the upstream group has a medical emergency, a blown valve, or simply can’t hack the wind, then some of the group may spend the night separated from food, groovers, and first-aid kits.

Yet Sundog’s area of expertise is not legality or foolhardiness—it’s ethics—and the fact of some activity being forbidden and stupid doesn’t make it unethical.

PROBE, these are desperate times trying to get to the river. The COVID recreation boom, combined with the online ease of applying for permits, has made it nigh impossible to win the “lottery” and float the big rivers. Perhaps this onerous process before the launch is what ratchets up the battle for the best camps. The behavior you describe by the commercial guides is, though not illegal, extremely irritating. Motoring past hard-working rowers and paddlers all but guarantees that the loudest polluters get the best camp. Ethical guides would cut their goddamn Evinrudes, and call out, “Hey, which camp were you hoping to reach tonight. We’ll be happy to skip that one so you can have it.”

Likely ain’t gonna happen. So we’re left with deciding how we can best behave. On canyons like the Gates of Lodore where sites are limited, boaters are required to sign up for camps and stick to that itinerary. Sundog finds this a Draconian fix, as it takes away from the sense of spontaneity and timeless drift that attracts him to rivers in the first place.

On the Salmon River, all parties are required to talk it out, perhaps hug, and decide who will camp where on which night. It’s a good idea. Sundog is aware of at least one instance in which commercial guides welched on their word and stole a camp from a private party, who made a point—justified, I’d say—of repaying them in kind the following night. However these shenanigans are precisely what motivates the paddle pigs to write more rules and regulations.

In your case, PROBE, the best practice would be to flag down the motor-rig and have a conversation to try to avoid the steal in the first place. If that fails, and your camp is taken, I suppose it is ethical to break the rules in order to fight what is otherwise a losing battle. But it’s a slippery slope, because when you set out to grab a camp from an outfitter, you’re just as likely grabbing it from another private party in front of you, which makes you the jerk.

Your question does raise another issue, which is why are motors allowed on a stretch of river in a designated wilderness that for at least a portion is labeled Wild and Scenic. The most obvious answer is the first 25 miles of windy flatwater. Difficult, sure, but boaters without motors have made their way through for over a century now. The longer answer is that motors allow outfitters to sell the 86-mile canyon as a 5-day trip, while muscle-powered expeditions take a few days longer. There is some rich irony in the well-intentioned leave-no-tracers straining their dishwater to avoid contaminating the river while a few yards from shore outboard motors spew oil and gas directly into the fishes’ living room.

In a column about being a surfing tourist in Mexico, Sundog suggested re-examining our beliefs about globalization. A reader, Stan Weig, responded:

I was intrigued by your recent column on “Yankee Imperialism” and Mexico travel, as I just returned from a five week drive to Cabo San Lucas and back. I have traveled to Baja since the ‘60s, in everything from a pickup camper to a really nice motorhome. And a 747.

While I respect the need to be nice to the subscribers that write in, I suggest your “middle-of-the-road” was too soft on the self-centered Rich White Yankee Surfer guilt trip of your advice seeker. 

Not everybody likes the huge condos, raucous tourist bars and t-shirt shops of Cabo—I don’t—and if your reader doesn’t like it, don’t go. But it’s more about preferences than an ethical quandary about globalization. I don’t particularly care for Miami Beach either. However, San Juan de Cabo is just to the north of Cabo and has a very different vibe and a well preserved old town—go there and rest easy. 

Tourists are a cash crop, and the folks running the sushi restaurant that she deplores, renting the beach chairs, and driving her around in a rental car made in Mexico and owned by Mexicans, are local entrepreneurs raising and harvesting that crop. Indeed, one could argue that in the good old days when we traveled from the high ground of Yankee prosperity down to “unspoiled” poverty of Mexico we were taking advantage as well.

Your advice to research and support local business was right on. If she doesn’t want to support globalist capitalists, she ought to be doing that here at home too. By the way, the reader may not know that while development along the beach may have been built with expat dollars, the ownership is required to be at least 51 percent Mexican. And she may not be aware of the government mandated efforts to ensure that local interests are at least somewhat protected during development. For example, perhaps the nicest beach in the Cabo area for sunning, swimming, and snorkeling is Chileno Beach. Right next to it is a huge new (and expensive!) resort—but access to the beach is free, there are nice restrooms, showers, and a lifeguard; and any of the locals that want to can take their kids and a cooler down to the beach for the day.

When we visited Todos Santos 35 years ago, the fabled Hotel California was shabby and in disrepair and all the side streets were pot holed dirt. Now the hotel is nice, locally run restaurants abound, local artists successfully compete with Made in China souvenir shops, and the streets are paved—so maybe tourism ain’t so bad.

Got a question of your own? Send it to sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

Mark Sundeen, aka Sundog, worked as a river guide for 11 years. These days he thinks young guides have a bit of attitude that they own the whole river, and he is happy to poach their campsites if the situation warrants it.

The post The Battle for Campsites Is Out Of Hand. Is it Ever OK to Steal One? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In July, when I reviewed the new version of Patagonia’s R1 wetsuits, I talked about how there is often a compromise between a product’s eco-friendliness and its performance, but Patagonia’s suit finally managed to score high marks in both. A month later, Billabong said, “Hold my beer.” The company’s new wetsuit performs even better on both fronts. Not only is it the most sustainable wetsuit currently available, but it’s also the most comfortable one I’ve ever worn. Plus, it cost less, too.

Billabong ČѱđČÔ’s 3/2mm Furnace Natural Upcycler Chest Zip Wetsuit

Sizing: S-XXL (men’s), XS-XXL (women’s)
Materials: 85% Natural Rubber and 15% synthetic ingredients, including Bolder Black, Oyster shell powder and Soybean oil
Models: 2/2, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, and 6/5 millimeter thicknesses, some with optional hoods, some sleeveless

Pros and Cons
⊕ Excellent flexibility
⊕ Comfortable
⊕ Easy entry/exit
⊕ Extremely eco-friendly
⊕ Materials dry quickly
⊗ Lack of silicone inside wrist and ankle cuffs allows some water to get in
⊗ Not quite as warm as the slightly thicker Patagonia R1

If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn more.

Unparalleled Sustainability

The most notable change that Billabong makes from traditional wetsuit construction is switching from neoprene to natural rubber for the foam material that makes up the bulk of the wetsuit. Unlike traditional neoprene, which uses rubber derived from fossil fuels or limestone, this rubber comes from sustainable, FSC-certified, organic hevea rubber trees in Guatemala, grown in a plantation that has existed since the 1940s. The rubber it produces is of exceptionally high quality, and it meets , , and compliance for environmental standards.

The rubber foam (think “neoprene,” but a natural version) contains 85 percent natural rubber, with the other 15 percent stabilizers typically called carbon black. While most companies still use petroleum-based carbon-black stabilizers, Billabong has partnered with Colorado-based Bolder Industries to incorporate its flagship product . Bolder Black is a very high-quality carbon black, but it’s made entirely of post-consumer recycled wetsuits (supplied by Billabong) and other used rubber products like tires. These stabilizers give the rubber its strength, increase elasticity, add pigment for UV resistance, and allow it to be blown into the stretchy foam that we know and love.

To make the other major components of wetsuits, the jerseys, and liners that cover the outside, Billabong has now switched to 100 percent post-consumer recycled textiles, keeping a lot of unwanted clothes out of landfills. Graphene panels, which are made of a combination of recycled textiles infused with Graphene, are added to keep you warmer, and Billabong claims that all of this feel-good eco-friendly stuff doesn’t sacrifice performance. Much to my surprise, I agree.

How It Tested

I spent the last couple of months testing the Furnace Natural Upcycler ($380), and can attest that the suit is sublimely comfortable. Thanks to the incredibly soft and flexible rubber, it’s easier to get on and off than any other suit I’ve worn. It’s so stretchy that I feel effectively no resistance when paddling, and I move about as freely as I do in boardshorts. The kneepads (made from natural rubber laminated with an abrasion-resistant recycled nylon jersey called Supratex) are resilient, providing ample protection when duck diving, and the inner seams haven’t chafed me at all. The liner has a nice cozy loft to it also. The zipper is high-quality: I haven’t had any issues with snagging like I did in the Patagonia wetsuit.

I’ve experienced no paddle fatigue in the suit, even during long sessions. It dries at least as quickly as any of my other suits, and it’s held up well, surviving the odd encounter with a rock or a fin without showing a scratch.

How It Compares to the Patagonia R1

The Furnace Natural is noticeably more comfortable than the fall 2023 (the next version of the R1 will likely be out in 2025). It feels lighter, it has more stretch, and it doesn’t have any zipper issues. It isn’t quite as warm as the R1, but that makes sense, considering the R1 is a 3/2.5-millimeter suit, not a 3/2-millimeter (Patagonia is one of the rare manufacturers that uses half-millimeter sizes).

The Furnace is also significantly cheaper, coming in at $380 versus $479 for the R1. You can even get a 3/2 Absolute Natural Upcycler (Billabong’s mid-range version) for as little as $269. This cheaper version has all the same eco updates, though it loses some of the higher-end bells and whistles (like the Airlite 4D jersey, the graphene lining, and the improved seam sealing). Patagonia doesn’t have a cheaper version, unfortunately.

While the Patagonia suit is very sustainable, Billabong has edged it out here by being the first company to produce a fully-functioning wetsuit available to the public with Bolder Black stabilizers, making the Natural Upcycler wetsuits derived by a vast majority from natural rubber or post-consumer recycled products. Patagonia won’t disclose where the stabilizers in its current suits come from, which, like in the Billabong, make up 15 percent of the foam rubber. Patagonia has announced, however, that it will also be using Bolder Black in its next iteration of wetsuits.

Downsides

The only ding on the Furnace Natural Upcycler is that I wish it had a silicone seal on the inside of the wrist and ankle cuffs. Because the rubber is so soft and malleable, I’ve had the sleeves or legs roll up on me a bit when wiping out (and once when paddling hard to get over a large approaching set). It’s a minor gripe, but it would be nice if that could be prevented.

Final Thoughts

The 3/2 Furnace Natural is fantastic for Southern California in the late spring, summer, and fall, but having spent time in it, I might opt for a 4/3 instead. This suit breathes well, and I’d like to be able to wear it during the colder months. Also, I prefer to be a little too warm than a little too cold. That said, I know plenty of people that feel the opposite.

At the end of the day, this is my new favorite wetsuit. All of the eco-forward features give me peace of mind, and I like that I’m not covering my entire epidermis in potentially cancer-causing materials. Apart from that, I wouldn’t know that it was an eco-forward suit if you didn’t tell me: this is a full-on performance wetsuit without sacrifice.

The Billabong Furnace Natural Upcycler suits are now available in and and in a variety of thicknesses and styles.

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Dear Sundog: Decades ago I worked with a close friend as a river guide and we were both complete dirtbags, living in our cars during raft season then traveling around during the winter. Since then, I’ve become financially successful and have a garage filled with rafts, kayaks, trailers, oars, paddles, and SUPs to prove it. My friend has worked as a freelancer and has always been candid about how difficult it is to pay his mortgage and make ends meet. At least once a year he asks to borrow a raft for a multi-day river trip (sometimes with me, sometimes not) and I’ve always been happy to lend it to him. He takes good care of my equipment and repairs or replaces anything that gets damaged. I love to see him taking his children out on the river.

Recently after a few beers around the campfire, he revealed to me that for two decades he and his wife had each been socking away $6,000 each year into their IRAs and investing in tech stocks, and now have a portfolio valued at half a million dollars. Now I feel a bit tricked, like he had the cash to buy his own boat years ago but chose instead to save, and I’d be a dupe for continuing to lend him mine. What should I do? —Loaner

Dear Loaner, I fully understand why you feel duped. You thought you were helping a poor relation; turns out he had been hoarding his dollars all along. While your friend’s behavior may have perplexed or even hurt you, I don’t think he was unethical. He was living frugally and within his means. In a country without a safety net, we know that we likely won’t be able to live off of Social Security, and we have to do our own saving and planning. Ditto that if we’d like to send our kids to college. And let’s face it, whitewater boats—and for that matter, all outdoor gear—is expensive. Former dirtbag guides like Sundog and you and your friend came to believe that the rafts, oars, trucks, and trailers sort of grew on trees: they arrived at the ramp each morning ready for us to use all day. It came as a shock to Sundog to learn that, after “retirement” from guiding, he couldn’t even afford to get back on the river! It would seem that your friend did the responsible thing and did not buy things out of his budget.

What’s more, there seems something inherently virtuous about borrowing in our world of over-consumption and ecological crisis. Rafts are manufactured from a toxic cocktail of chemicals; it’s hard to justify purchasing one that is going to sit in a garage 50 weeks out of the year.

Lastly, was your friend obliged to keep you posted on the status of his retirement investments over the year? I think not.

And yet. You not only chose to invest in fun and adventure—you freely lent your toys to someone in need. It doesn’t seem fair. Loaner, you would be perfectly within your rights to simply tell your friend in the future that you’d prefer not to lend your boat anymore. You don’t even need to supply a reason.

Before you do, I’d recommend that you think deeply about why you have been so generous in the past. Was it because you simply wanted your friend to enjoy the river? Or were there murkier waters? For example, did you enjoy the regular reminder that you were more financially successful than your friend? Here’s a useful thought experiment: what if a similar friend who lived close to the bone asked to borrow your gear, and yet you knew that he had a massive trust fund. Would it feel wrong to give to someone who clearly did not need it? Charity is slippery. Sometimes we give out of true empathy, but sometimes we give to feel good about ourselves, or even simply to give others the impression that we are generous. After all what is more benevolent: a tycoon who gives a million dollars which is a small fraction of his fortune, or a homeless person who gives you his last dollar?

I’d say that what’s more important than the boat here is the friendship, and you don’t want the oar frame to become a proxy battleground for unspoken resentments. Probably what’s best—though not easiest—is before the next spring runoff is that you take your friend for a beer or a walk, and talk this through, not so much the specifics of the loaning, but your deeper values around money, spending, and savings. There is a good reason that people are reluctant to talk about money—there’s a lot of shame both in having too much and having too little. Talking about it will likely make the friendship stronger.

In a recent column, Sundog weighed in on collecting rocks on public lands. One experienced reader suggested that we consider what it is that the rocks want, a position so unexpected and delightful that Sundog wishes he’d come up with it first:

As a field biologist who would like to be a geologist in another life, I enjoyed your reflection. Whenever I have traveled—like your wife—I return with a rock. Well, perhaps more than one. And my garden is littered with these rocks. There are flakes from Vegas mixed with flakes from the Rift Valley. Maybe I thought they could have a conversation.

I too covet rocks. So now, before I take, I ask the rock: “Are you doing a job?”  I am always answered. “My job is to be a part of this hillside” or “My job is to make a striking statement for those who will pass by.” Or “I am here to be found by a child and painted.”  But sometimes they will say, “I am not doing any meaningful work and have no special purpose, in fact I just find myself with nothing to do that is good for any creature, any rock, or rock bank.” I take those to the rock wall I am building. And they are appreciated regularly. Not that they need that. But I am grateful that they are part of my world and there is something to be said for gratitude.

Still, when my husband and I travel we say to each other: just one! Last trip resulted in one very small piece of bubbly chalcedony. —Robbin

Mark Sundeen, aka Sundog, has been borrowing other people’s rafts since as far back as the 90s. When doing so, it’s a good idea to pay forward the generosity.

Got a question of your own? Mad as hell about something Sundog wrote? Send a note to: sundogsalmanac@hotmail.com.

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In my early twenties, I worked briefly as a snorkel assistant on a tourist boat in Maui. I helped guests defog their mask and get their fins on and off, but mostly my job entailed making sure everyone had a good time.

On my first day, the captain gave me some sage advice: “Sometimes the best response to a guest is to simply smile and nod.” I did a lot of smiling and nodding that summer, to questions like “Has the ocean been sprayed for sharks?” and “Does the water go all the way around the island?” Maybe the sun was getting to people, I thought. Maybe it was vacation brain, which we all lapse into on occasion. I laughed these off amiably.

Fielding such nonsensical queries gave me a whole new appreciation for wilderness guides. We pepper them with endless curiosities, and they respond with infinite patience and kindness. They educate millions of people largely disconnected from nature and some who think caribou magically turn into elk at a certain elevation. (Apparently, this a very popular misconception.)

I asked my guide friends in the travel industry to tell me the funniest questions they’ve gotten from clients over the years. Here are some of the most hilarious.

Lessons in World Geography

“Can’t I just hop a bus from Quito to the łÒČč±ôĂĄ±èČčČ”ŽÇČő? How long would that take?” —an American client on a łÒČč±ôĂĄ±èČčČ”ŽÇČő Islands trip with Rebecca șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Travel. Staffer Katie Beckwith explained that the islands lie about 600 miles off the Ecuadorean coast, and that a plane was the best way to travel there from the nation’s landlocked capital city.

“What is the primary language taught in schools here?” —a guest on a Natural Habitat șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs trip in Alaska. “In a way, this is a testament to how exotic and remote Alaska can feel at times—like another country,” the guide I spoke with told me. “However, they still teach English in schools here, just like they do in Minnesota.”

Coming to Terms with the Concept of Sea Level

“What elevation are we at?” —a client kayaking in Antarctica with G șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, in addition to a client standing on Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur, California, during a Backroads trip. More than a few wilderness newbies are still sorting out what sea level means.

Swell Times and Teachings

“Do I need to know how to swim in order to snorkel?” —a traveler on an excursion specifically catered to snorkelers. Andy McComb, founder of Redline Rafting in Maui, said his team fields this question almost daily. Their response: “Well, it’s a great day for a boat ride.” I would have added gently that a snorkel is not considered a floatation device.

“Where are the waves? I paid for the waves!” —a Stoked Surf School client during a lesson on a sunny, wind-free, small-swell day off the South African coast. As surf-school owner Michelle Smith points out, any wave is good when you’re a beginner riding a nine-foot soft top. “I replied very diplomatically that I have no control over the weather, but I could assist in making the most of the conditions,” she said.

The Wilderness Really Is Wild

“Don’t be ridiculous! They wouldn’t put wild animals inside a national park.” —a client visiting Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve. Naturalist guide Brooke Edwards of Alaska Wildland șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs was surprised to hear this comment while explaining to her group that food should not be left out in the open in Denali National Park because animals like bear and marmots would make a grab for it.

Natural Habitat șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs specializes in eco-conscious wildlife trips. Over the years, company guides have learned how to wittingly respond to naive animal questions such as: “Polar bears look so cuddly. Don’t you think it’s OK to just pet them once, really quickly?” To which guides have replied: “Yes, you can pet them. Once. And you’ll never get to pet anything ever again.”

“Is there any way to call the butterflies closer to us?” To which guides have said. “I left my butterfly whistle at home—sorry!”

And some questions are best left unanswered, like these two:

“How many birds does a giraffe eat in a day?”

“At what age does a rhino turn into a hippo?”

There’s No Remote Control in Nature

“What time do they turn off the waterfalls?” —a frequent question fielded by the staff of Basecamp Ouray in Colorado when guiding summer hikes. Logan Tyler, founder of the outfit, said that after about 30 seconds of awkward silence, he usually just moves on, leaving the question lingering.

You Can’t Have Fries with That

“Do you think McDonald’s would pay to rebuild the Darwin Arch as fiberglass golden arches?” —a client in łÒČč±ôĂĄ±èČčČ”ŽÇČő National Park on a trip with Latin Travel Collection. Company founder David Torres explained that the famous lava arch of Darwin, which collapsed due to erosion in 2021, is a 14-hour boat ride from the closest inhabited island, so McDonald’s would likely have no interest in such advertising in the middle of the Pacific.

“Can you helicopter in Thai food, burgers, and pizza?” —a Seven Summits client at Everest Base Camp. These guides have had similar requests before, and in this instance they actually coordinated delivery from Kathmandu.

The Wilderness Is Not a Movie Set Staged for Your Pleasure

“Who paints the aspens?” —a client on a snowmobile tour to Colorado’s Maroon Bells. Guide Sam Terlingo explained that the aspens’ “paint” is natural.

“You’ve gone to so much trouble lighting the trees for Christmas.” —a camper with Tribal șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, a tour operator specializing in remote adventures in the Philippines, pointing to the acacias along the shore. At this particular off-grid camp, those “lights” were courtesy of fireflies. Staffer Greg Hutchinson said his team just smiled and nodded.

“Is that island always there?” —a client on an Alaska Sea Kayakers trip to Prince William Sound. This was another question the guide just let go.

“Bringing all this sand and creating this lovely campsite is such a great idea. How did you do it? Must’ve taken a lot of effort.” —a guest at Aquaterra șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs’ Camp Silver Sands site on the India’s Ganga River. Founder Vaibhav Kala jokingly replied to the client, it was even more difficult to build the roads to truck all of the sand there.

“Do you mind calling park management and asking if they can release more of the blue coloring in the water? My photos are just not blue enough!” —a guest in Croatia’s Plitvice Lakes National Park, known for its 16 mesmerizingly blue waterfalls . “After a few moments, when I realized that that his question was not a joke, I explained that the colors of the lakes are all natural and changed hue through the day, depending on the sun,” shared Tihomir Jambrovic, cofounder of the operator Terra Magica șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs. “I’m still not convinced that he believed me completely.”

Finally, Keep Your Hands Off the Guides

“Is it true the guides aren’t allowed to sleep with guests?” —a woman on a Zion National Park trip with Black Sheep șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, Inc. The tour operator’s founder, Fred Ackerman, affirmed that this was indeed his company’s policy. To which the client replied: “That’s too bad. Your tips would be higher.”

Jen Murphy is șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online’s travel advice columnist. She has the utmost admiration for wilderness guides and has to regularly bite her tongue when she hears clients ask ridiculous questions.

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If you think caring for nature is all work and no play, you haven’t met Hannah Tizedes and Ryan Harris. These two water lovers are very different—one favors lakes, the other oceans—but they share a common goal to fuse their joy outdoors with protecting the places they love. It’s a passion we all share at some level—they just do it better than most, inspiring us to go outside, play hard, and care for the planet and each other. It’s a time-tested spirit, one that KEEN has adopted to build that lets you play outdoors while minimizing your impact. Learn from Tizedes and Harris below, and find out how their shoes align with their mission.

The Sculptor: Hannah Tizedes

Mission: Clean Up the Great Lakes

When Hannah Tizedes tells people she makes art out of trash, they usually frown with skepticism. Then she shows them her work—bright, made of colorful microplastics—and watches those expressions transform.

Tizedes, a Michigan-based artist and environmental advocate, grew up near the Great Lakes. Like other kids, she splashed in the water and camped on the shore. And ever since she can remember, she’s roamed the beaches, amazed by all the unique stones, shells, and plastic treasures. “All this color was literally washing up on the shore,” she says.

Around 2015, Tizedes started arranging the plastic pieces to make mosaics and sharing the images on a social media account. Her message wasn’t just about upcycling. She wanted people to know about plastic pollution in the Great Lakes, America’s largest source of freshwater, and show that something could be done about it.

“I realized that if I wanted to make my life my passion, I had to tell people,” Tizedes says. She started speaking up and launched a nonprofit to help clean up the lakes, rivers, and communities in Michigan. Her work resonates with people, and not just because it’s beautiful. Instead of doom and gloom, she takes a playful approach to plastic waste. Her work combines the time-tested, traditional method of mosaic-making with a colorful, modern twist.

“You can make an impact wherever you are,” Tizedes says. “Get involved, and make it fun.”

 

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Tested:

“They combine the best of a water shoe and a hiking shoe,” says Tizedes. “They let me tackle all the different types of terrain in one trip without having to pack multiple pairs of shoes. They’re so lightweight and breezy, and the Aquagrip makes me feel really sturdy and safe when walking along wet surfaces. I’ll definitely be wearing on beach cleanups so I can walk along slippery rocks and access trash in hard-to-reach places.”

Consciously Created

Building anything authentic and sustainable—anything that will stand the test of time—starts with intention. Intention to apply a planet- and people-first philosophy that acts as a north star for any endeavor, from making art to designing products. KEEN calls it —a way of reimagining how gear gets made so it supports both humanity and the environment from start to finish. Here’s how that approach resulted in the Newport, a hybrid shoe that’s free of forever chemicals.

The Shaper: Ryan Harris

Mission: Make Sustainable Surfboards

At 22, Ryan Harris thought he’d landed his dream job as a product designer at a big firm. But the corporate culture made the gig more like a nightmare, so Harris moved to Los Angeles to start over. Shortly after, a close friend took him surfing. Harris fell head over heels for the sport—and immediately realized that he was too tall for most of the boards available. So, he decided to make his own.

And that led him to a life-changing epiphany. “Surfboard manufacturing is pretty hypocritical. We wouldn’t have surfing without the ocean. And yet the boards are very toxic,” he says. “We’re poisoning the thing we rely on.” Harris started speaking up, advocating for the use of eco-friendly resins and recycled materials in the surf industry and following his own version of the Consciously Created ethos.

Harris used the eco-resins to sculpt custom boards, adding color and details with the care of an artist. Today, he also upcycles old boards, makes new boards from salvaged marine plastic, and runs the to share his skills. He’s also pioneering new ways to turn plastic waste into durable furniture and planking.

Of course, Harris still makes time to catch a few waves. “Not only do I go to the water and get immersed in Mother Nature to calm and center myself, but it’s also super inspirational to what I’m doing,” he says. The movement of the water gives him ideas for new shaping elements, and the colors and patterns inform his designs.

Tested: KEEN Hyperport

“The ocean is my church and my sanctuary. I’m in it daily,” says Harris. “So I feel good about wearing these to the beach—in and out of the water. I love the protected toe feature, especially when hiking or slip-sliding across rocks, and the adjustable drawstrings work great for cinching them up tight.”

KEEN is a shoemaker with purpose. Family owned and values-led for more than 20 years, KEEN has been consciously making unapologetically comfortable, innovative footwear that lasts and using its business to do good. In 2003, KEEN started a revolution with the introduction of the original hybrid sandal, the Newport. As a revolutionary, thoughtful shoemaker, KEEN is determined to reduce the impact of how it makes shoes. The brand has been PFAS-free since 2018 and envisions a shoe industry that has a net-positive impact on lives. To get there, KEEN is sharing its sustainable innovations to do more good together. Learn more at .

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The main reason to buy a custom surfboard is because you can’t find the board you want on a shelf. A custom surfboard is a big step in a surfer’s journey, and it can bring noticeable, tangible benefits to the way you surf and how much fun you have. Ideally, you’ll end up with a board that is a sublime match for your body, style, goals, and the waves you frequent. But it can also be an overwhelming experience (and a not-insignificant investment in time and money), so you want to get it right.

Luckily for you, we’ve got it covered. I worked with two legendary shapers—Britt Merrick and Guy Okazaki—and went through the custom shaping process (twice), in order to bring you this comprehensive guide to ordering a custom surfboard—complete with what to expect, the questions to ask, the information you’ll need, and the pitfalls to avoid.

Step One: Do Your Research

The first step is to try as many different boards as you can. Your local surf shop, OfferUp, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace are all great resources for this. I spent $350 on a used surfboard from Craigslist, rode it for a little while, then sold it to someone else for $350, and bought something else to play with. Used boards can hold their value well if you don’t damage them. Also, look for demo days at your local surf shop.

“I have a friend who’s a really good surfer, and for the last few years, he’s just been buying the most random boards off Craigslist,” up-and-coming Venice pro surfer told me. “But now he’s in this phase where he knows exactly what he wants because he’s tried so many boards. So now when he goes to a shaper, he has all this knowledge to pull from.”

The next phase of your research should be to talk to other surfers. Look for surfers right around your size and ability level at your local breaks and ask them what they’re on and how they like it. If you can afford it, hire an experienced coach for a session or two, and see what suggestions they might have for your next surfboard. The web is also a great resource. Both the Pyzel and Channel Islands websites have live chats with actual humans on the other end, and they are extremely knowledgeable and helpful. They can help you get a better handle on what might, and what might not work for you (just be respectful of their time).

Step Two: Pick Your Surfboard Shaper

Find a shaper who will take the time to understand where you’re at and where you want to go and ensure they have the skills to make the right board for the job. A good shaper carries a wealth of knowledge about surfboard design and surfing in general. It may also give you an opportunity to work with a local who has deep insights about the waves you’ll be surfing the most, and you get to support the local surf economy.

I went into this quest knowing that I wanted two boards: A point-break specialist for some of my favorite spots in Malibu and Ventura, and a hyper-local board for the beach break I surf in Venice 80 percent of the time. After months of research, I found my two dream shapers.

Britt Merrick,

Britt was literally raised in a surfboard factory, as the son of world renown shaper and founder of Channel Islands Surfboards, Al Merrick. He would grow up to become an iconic shaper in his own right, making award-winning surfboards (including several winners) for WSL Championship Tour event winners and average joes alike. Channel Islands is based in Santa Barbara, home to legendary point breaks like Rincon, and considering how many boards he’s made for people who compete at places Jeffreys Bay and Snapper Rocks, I figured he’d be the perfect person to make my point break killer. Note: anyone can request a board from Britt, but it will most likely take months longer than usual because he has a massive queue.

Surfboard shaper Guy Okazaki at work (Photo: Courtesy Guy Okazaki)

Guy Okazaki,

When it came to finding a shaper for my Venice beach break board, I knew exactly who I hoped would make it. It seemed like 20 percent of the boards I would see at my favorite spot had a big “GOS” stamped on the deck. Plus, Okazaki has been surfing here since the 1950s, so not many people know the wave better. Okazaki was born in Hawaii, where he first learned to shape surfboards from his dad and legends of the sport, including Rabbit Kekai. He would go on to travel and surf with world champions, and he’s been shaping boards in his garage in Venice for more than 30 years. For my usual spot, Guy is as local as it gets, and every surfer I talked to raved about his boards.

This brings up an important point: You want to pick your shaper based on their strengths and based on what you’re looking for. I determined that Merrick and Okazaki were likely the best fit for my specific criteria, but if I wanted a surfboard for Hawaii, then maybe Wade Tokoro or John Pyzel would be the move.

Step 3: Talk with Your Shaper

Set up a phone call (or an in-person meeting if you can) with the shaper to discuss the board. You should familiarize yourself with the boards they make because chances are high that they will be using one of those models as a starting point.

Typically, shapers will first ask about your height and weight. Then they’ll likely ask your age and how often you surf to determine how much board you need. Next, all that time you spent trying different boards will come in handy when they ask you what you have been riding and how they worked (or didn’t work) for you.

When I asked Merrick and Okazaki what the most important factor is for determining the right board, they had the same answer: it depends on where and how you surf now, and where and how you’re hoping to in the near future.

The “where” questions to ask yourself: Are you mostly going to be surfing beach breaks, point breaks, or reef breaks? This is where a shaper with knowledge of your preferred breaks can come in handy. And what size waves will you be on, realistically?

The “how” is a bit harder to quantify. What do you want to do on the wave? What do you enjoy now, and where would you like to get in in the next few years? For example, I told the shapers that I really want to improve my carving, work on speed generation, and build confidence in steeper barreling waves. For me, these are modest but realistic goals for where I am in my evolution as a surfer.

Pitfalls to Avoid

1. Don’t let your ego get in the way. I get it—nobody wants to seem like a kook, but you have to avoid over-inflating your skills. “That’s the most common mistake people make,” Merrick told me. “If they don’t have realistic expectations and goals, then they tend to get the wrong board altogether. Usually, that means not getting enough surfboard. Especially with beginners, they get small boards like the pros, and they don’t have the paddling power, so they miss a ton of waves. You’ve also got to start making adjustments for your physicality, and age.”
2. Don’t forget to be specific. Terms like Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert, are extremely nebulous. Tell your shaper the things you feel like you’re doing well, and tell them the things you’re struggling with. Video clips can tell a shaper a lot about where you’re at, and their experienced eyes will likely spot things in your surfing that you don’t even know to look for. Get a friend to film you from shore, and show them a mix of your best and worst waves to give them the most accurate picture.
3. Don’t fall into the current obsession with surfboard volume. It’s not that volume isn’t important, but it’s not that helpful on its own. Okazaki broke it down: “Over the last few years, the first metric out of someone’s mouth has been volume, and I always chuckle, ‘Well, where do you want that volume? Do you want it in the middle, in the nose, in the tail, distributed uniformly? Do you want it on the rails or more in the center?’ And they realize that they hadn’t given that a thought. Where that volume is is really more important than what the volume is.”

Step 4: Finishing Touches

While you and your shaper talk, they’ll be taking down your decisions in an order form. This is also where you’ll make choices about which type of fin-boxes you want, and how many. You’ll decide whether you want a traditional foam or EPS, what type of fiberglass (or carbon fiber), how heavy, and whether you’d like to use polyurethane resin or epoxy. Each of these things will affect the way your board performs to different degrees, and while whole articles have been written about each of those categories, again, talk to your shaper about what they think would work best for the design you’ve agreed on.

This is also where you’ll make a decision about art. Do you want to leave the board white, or add a tint to the resin? Or a swirl? Do you have some art you would like laminated onto the deck? These things are a personal touch that make the board feel more uniquely yours, but each one of them will add to the overall cost.

Once everything is agreed on, you will plunk down a deposit (typically $100-200, though some want full payment upfront), and they will get to work making your board. Your shaper will give you a rough timeline when you finalize the details. It could be just a few weeks if they’re not too busy, or it could be three months. Resist the urge to bug them until after the due date has passed. There is no question a shaper hates more than, “Is it ready yet?”

My Custom Boards

For my Channel Islands point-break board, Merrick steered me toward his  a board that was designed to paddle and catch waves like a much longer board, but surf more like a shortboard. My only reservation was that I wanted something that could handle bigger, steeper, barreling waves (dare to dream). He said no problem and borrowed the thinner rails from his , which are a bit more refined and would also help with my turns.

Merrick recommended a 6-foot, 8-inch board, which would be my biggest board in years, but promised it wouldn’t surf that way. I had him add five fin-boxes instead of the standard three, so I could ride it as a thruster, a quad, or a twin (i.e. a three-fin, a four-fin, or a two-fin configuration), depending on the day. I also had the board made with (Varial just recently, tragically, went out of business due to a supply-chain interruption, when they were priced out of their foam by the aerospace industry), glassed with epoxy resin tinted Creamsicle orange, and I had a rose emblazoned on the deck.

For my Venice board, I came to Okazaki with a laundry list of what I wanted the board to do. After hearing my thoughts and watching my flailing surf videos, he thought would be a good place to start, or the as he would come to call this latest iteration of a board he’s been evolving for 22 years.

Okazaki planned to throw in a fairly moderate double concave through the tail, and a single concave around where my front foot would be. That should enhance rail-to-rail transitions, give it a little more pop, and hopefully increase speed out of turns. Guy advocated for a swallow-tail with a prominent double-wing just ahead of it, which would allow for very straight rails for speed, but then give it a nice break to pivot off of for turns. He suggested we go with a 6-foot, 2-inch, with standard polyurethane (PU) foam blank and lightweight four-ounce PU glassing. I had him throw on the same rose I put on my CI board, plus a five-fin-box setup, and picked a Pantone color that looked like bubblegum.

The Results

A few months later, both boards have exceeded my wildest expectations.

I’ve taken my Merrick CI board to point breaks up and down the California coast, in everything from waist-high waves to well overhead. The board has allowed me to get into waves early, then pump down the line, and really sink into my carves like I’d hoped. In the few months that I’ve had it, I’ve probably caught four of the top five longest and most memorable waves of my life.

For my Okazaki board, I gave Guy such a long list of things I wanted it to do—some of which seemed at odds with each other—and somehow he did it. It has great paddle power, but I can still duck-dive it. The board can make steep, late drops, but it also has great speed down the line. Trimming around flat sections is easy, but then it turns on a dime with very little effort and takes off again. I’m riding this board at the local spot I’ve been walking to several times a week for the last three years, and I’m having more fun out there than I ever have. What’s more important than that?

Last Advice from the Shapers

“I recommend trying to stay as local as you can,” Okazaki told me. “And that’s more than just for the shaper.” One of Okazaki’s greatest concerns is the increasing acidification of our oceans. That’s one of the reasons he uses U.S. Blanks for his foam, because they operate in Los Angeles, and because of that they’re subject to the most stringent environmental standards in the nation. It’s just a 20-minute drive from Okazaki’s shop to their factory, so the carbon footprint to get a blank from them is as minimal as it gets, and they’re fully solar-powered, too. Okazaki also works with local glassers (which most shapers usually do), which again requires minimal transport, and feeds money directly into the local surf economy.

“It’s rare these days that you get a product that’s all hand-made by skilled craftsmen and women,” Merrick mused. “It’s not your tennis racket, golf club, snowboard, or basketball that just gets pumped out by machines. People should approach it with an appreciation for the art and the craftsmanship. Once people start to appreciate that they’ll appreciate surfing as a whole even more.”

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Nothing says vacation like a beach. But sand alone does not a great beach make. I want a peaceful place to soak up the sun but also prefer destinations where I can surf, swim, kayak, and hike to take in an incredible view. In my two decades as a travel writer, I’ve seen my fair share of gorgeous beaches, but none of them have struck me as much as these. Each is worth the journey to get there.

These are my picks for the 15 most beautiful beaches in the world.

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, Brazil

Why it’s tops: When it comes to beaches, Brazil has an embarrassment of riches. But none can compare with Lençóis Maranhenses, a mirage-like landscape of cerulean lagoons hidden among 30-to-60-foot-high dunes the color of pearls. These freshwater pools are fullest between June and September, after the austral spring’s rains, and the unique ecosystem is home to endangered species like the scarlet ibis and neotropical otter. You can explore the park on foot or with a dune buggy, but a horseback-riding safari with is the best approach, because you can choose a slow pace while still delving miles into the dunes.

How to get there: This 43-mile stretch of coast in northeastern Brazil is truly off the beaten path. First you’ll wing into São Luís (a three-plus-hour flight from São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro), then drive four hours east to the gateway town of Santo Amaro do Maranhão. Or head to the village of Atins, located at the mouth of the Preguiças River; the area is a popular kitesurfing spot from July to December.

Where to stay: Some of the tallest dunes are found on the west side of the park, easily accessed from Santo Amaro, which is sprinkled with inns like (from $45) and newcomer (from $580). In Atins, ($330) is a hip hotel.

What to bring: The sand can be scorching, so pack water sandals. And Atins has no ATM, so have cash or a credit card handy.

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