One of surfing’s great joys is the eclectic characters that it attracts. That’s the premise of a new book edited by Claudia Lebenthal called Surfer Stories: 12 Untold Stories by 12 Writers about 12 of the World’s Greatest Surfers.
“I love everything about the culture, the photography, the style, the surfers — it’s just so rich in so many different ways,” said Lebenthal, a long-time photographer and creative director in a phone interview. “I’ve been obsessed.” In Surfer Stories , Lebenthal focuses on the people at the heart of surfing and finds life lessons in the ocean’s unpredictability and the search for balance riding waves requires.
The book’s chapters roughly follow the arc of surfing history, and the collection opens with an immersive account of waves forming and traveling across the ocean by Gerry Lopez. “Waves come from wind and can travel thousands of miles before getting to where that surfer is waiting,” he writes. “The surfer waits, trying to be exactly where he thinks that next wave will be.” A pioneer at Pipeline in the 1970s, Lopez describes the feeling of being caught out of position and held underwater. He readily connects the experience to life on land. “Surfing teaches us to go with the flow smoothly and to be in the moment spontaneously,” he writes. “When we find ourselves caught inside, the best thing we can do is to keep paddling.”