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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Surfing (and living) like a Child with Trevor Olson
Jesse French
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast. My name is Jesse French and I am your host today and excited today because I am joined by a good friend of mine, a good friend of Restoration Projects and very much looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have. And his name is Trevor Olson. Trevor, it is great to have you here on the podcast. Thanks for taking a little bit of time out of your day. Excited for what's ahead, buddy.
Trevor Olson
Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too.
Jesse French
Trevor, give us just a little sense of like where we find you here today. I can see on our screen, but yeah, physically, where are you? Give us kind of an intro there and yeah, I would love to hear that. then just however you would like to introduce folks to who you are, I'll follow that up after you, but yeah, give us a little snippet.
Trevor Olson
I am located in San Diego. grew up here. I have been here now, along with growing up. I've been back for about going on 10 years in June. And in between that, I was out in Virginia beach in the new Hampshire, but have since returned. I am a psychologist for the most part. I had a practice, sold the practice and am now
in the process of the second, whatever the second phase perhaps of work life is. And I'm familiar with restoration project vis-a-vis Greg Eller. And this was also then through being able to go to the same church that he did. met a couple of his sons, one in particular. So I know you guys vis-a-vis Greg and Greg invited me several times. He was thankfully consistent and persistent. So.
I ended up going to the PNW Grove four years ago and that's how I kind of entered into your guys' type of life.
Jesse French
Yeah. Yeah. I think I met you Trevor. I think it was three years ago, if my math is right at one of those grows up there in the Northwest. And, um, yeah, I've been able to have our paths cross kind of once a year or so since then. And yeah, grateful for your friendship and your participation in restoration project. Trev, one of the kind of the way that we want to jump into today's conversation is specifically around the arena of surfing.
And excited to explore that more with you. And I'll just give this, this kind of brief intro. So there's a whole, maybe someday we'll devote a whole kind of podcast episode to the entire story of when a few of us went surfing last October up in Washington. There's so much goodness there. And that was the last time that I saw you, were going surfing with a handful of other buddies at a restoration project retreat. And without going into the whole deep dive of that.
the just kind of important pack of some of the important pieces. That was my first time ever going surfing. Trevor, as we're going to explore here today, has surfed a bunch and is just an old pro at it. And just to give like the listeners this little snippet, I remember we were driving in this pickup truck. It's not even light out and we're driving to the beach and Trevor just like I could tell he was excited. He started telling some stories of other times that he had gone surfing and just was
very clear like, hey, here's a guy who loves to surf has been in many, many different scenarios. And I was very grateful because that puts some of like my own uncertainty and nerves that were running fairly high that morning at ease. so it was really, really fun to be out there. Trev showed me a lot of pointers and yeah, was a sweet, sweet morning. one someday we'll, go into the full download of that because there's a lot of fun layers of that story out there.
Trevor Olson
Yeah. It's the best, ⁓ best search session of the last 12 months, if not more. I completely agree.
Jesse French
So good. George, take us into the origin story of how did you start surfing? What did that process look like and how has that unfolded since then?
Trevor Olson
So my dad is from Montana. ⁓ His dad's side were folks that came out after the railroad got put through and the railroad companies were selling off the land. They managed to make it. It was hard. They bought at a really mild time and then the subsequent, I think like 10 or 20 years, was the high plains reverted to intense, beat cold. So he's from Montana. My mom's from LA.
Jesse French
I did not
Trevor Olson
they met in San Diego, they were going to this church that was kind of a John Wember, post John Wember Vineyard, where there were still a of signs and wonders. And the church was kind of on top of this hill in La Jolla called Mount Soledad. So a lot of our lives growing up were kind of within striking distance when we were little of this small condo that my mom.
had and my dad moved into and they got married. So the first place that I ever caught away was down in this. Now I can appreciate it for what it is. It's one of the most beautiful places actually in the whole world. But when we were kids, that was also the closest place that we could go to the beach. So we drove down the hill. I imagine my dad was kind of a polymath in a lot of ways, like he's a really smart guy. And so at that point, I think he was into.
recreationally, I think he was in swimming. So he was down there. He would go out for swims. There's some open water that you can swim to from the shore out to a point back. So anyway, the first wave that I ever caught was this pretty small wave, but the boogie boards at that time in the eighties were big. This thing was probably the size of like, imagine a boogie board that's like two thirds the size of a, of like an indoor door. And so
You know, I was probably like three, four, maybe I remember being completely surrounded by. And there's that unforgettable, totally distinct feeling once the wave catches you and you get slingshotted forward by it. That's the thing that I remember the most was just the actual. And even when you're little, somehow, you know, the moment at which the wave you actually caught the wave. So I boogie boarded a little bit as a kid, but actually didn't
really surf until later. Boogie boarding wasn't even that big of a thing for my fam. Once we moved it changed too. I think that proximity to the beach thinking about it now was probably a, that was more to it than I gave it credit for. But later on, fast forward to junior high when I learned to surf, I went to junior high as a homeschooler. So I was in private school, like a homeschool and then I went back to private school, promptly got, well, I immediately got bullied and bad. mean,
If you can imagine, you know, like a slightly chubby kid walking around in private school clothes that his mom, she wouldn't let me get saggy pants. She wouldn't let me get longer shirts. So you can imagine this, this totally homeschoolified kid walking around a private school back when kids used to still get bullied in person. That was me. so surfing was actually this upshot. My dad was trying to my confidence. So
learned to surf together in seventh grade, I think it was. I was still so scared not fitting in that I didn't even really claim it as my own until I think maybe like eighth or ninth grade. But yeah, I learned to surf on a surfboard as a response on my dad's part to try and help me feel better about myself since I was getting bullied at school every day.
Jesse French
How was that process then of, know, so your dad's kind of, said we were learning together and is aware of just the desire to, give you some confidence. Like, was it kind of like love at first sight of, man, I just eat this up and the time out on the waves is, I just can't get enough. Or was it a process or how did that unfold?
Trevor Olson
It's cool to think about it in that regard. This is totally my dad's style. We learned to surf through a college extension program. So he went to med school down here at UCSD and still had alumni benefits. we went to, I kid you not, we went to a day and a half of classes to learn to surf. We sat in this old outdoor rec trailer shed with this super tan guy who
Made me that would that encourage me. thought, okay, this guy looks cool. So I think this is probably still the right idea, even though we're taking notes. And after a day and a half, we walked across the peninsula from mission bay out to Pacific side. And to your point, I think I can see this clearly now. When I caught that first wave, it's like when anybody catches a wave, it's a total surprise because
up until that point, you never stood on water before. or if you have, got pulled behind a boat, but when you stand up on water for the first time and all it is is energy that's underneath you, it's a total surprise. That surprise. hadn't thought about this part before that that surprise was a confidence giver. I wouldn't even say it was a builder, but you know, if I went out into the water in those subsequent years, it definitely gave me confidence.
I wasn't that good at translating it back onto the shore, but I could go out into the ocean and experience it there.
Jesse French
Okay. So I have to say this. I love that that was an extension class that you took because in Colorado, like what do I think about extension? think of agriculture and like all these other things, but the fact that California has extension serving classes makes me so happy. That's fantastic. Oh man. Trevor, that's, mean, what you just finished saying of, you know, same, and I'm not sure I was good translating the confidence.
that I experienced in the water outside of, as you surf now, does it still give you that same confidence? And if it does, is there an ability for that to translate out of the water?
Trevor Olson
Surfing now is a little bit of a question mark in my life. It's interesting that as you know, like I was telling you the other day, it's interesting that we're doing this today because tomorrow I'm going to Indonesia for two weeks. So this will be by far the furthest ascension into surfing itself. mean, I've served most of my life. When I was in college, I served a lot. I went to my dad's alma mater undergrad. went to UCSD and there's a big underwater canyon off La Jolla.
that creates these immediately recognizable. can, the surf spots called blacks and it's actually, it's not a reference to the black sand beach. There was an old Texas oil tycoon when La Hoya was just getting started. This guy, just imagine this, this guy owned half of the entire town. He owned probably three or four miles of ocean bluff. Then his name was Louis Black. So.
Anyway, the surf spots named after him, these deep underwater canyons filter the swell into these two particular places that themselves break in both directions. you on big days, you can see the wave coming from a long, long ways away because that water is getting channeled so far out. I surfed a lot then I served a ton in high school, but to your question, having this podcast the day before going to Indo.
really highlights the fact that it's a question mark in my life now. Growing up, after I realized I could experience a little bit of confidence in the water and you can imagine it immediately became, I mean almost instantly became the BL Endel in my life. I mean, I played grandest in high school. I also played soccer previous to that. I had played piano competitively, all of that to the back seat because I had sort of, think rightfully and wrongfully concluded that
The key to my life was being out in the water. So we fast forwarded through my life, having sort of become a lot more rooted and grounded in love. The whole nature of surfing at this point really can only exist in its pure form. say like, if you were to go out to the beach right now, most of the people that are really good, you're dealing with resource scarcity. So they're competitive. They are.
Delegated they are often deeply disappointed and disillusioned, but they love it. And if you mix that all together, it's a difficult thing so unlike the kind of original way in which people surf say like in Hawaii or the way that people learn to surf which is pure I have come to this point now where so I'm thinking about going to endo tomorrow I just really have to this is the thing that I've been praying about
The only way that it's going to work going forward is as I can end up experiencing it, say the way you guys experienced in an October. Part of what was so powerful about October was that that was the true reality of surfing.
Jesse French
Yeah. So say more about that. talked about kind of surfing as it's used the word pure to describe it. What do mean by that?
Trevor Olson
Well, so surfing, mean, originally surfing was, and this is really interesting to think about as a Christian, people attest to this, independent of their faith or lack thereof, surfing was originally a religious activity. So, yes. Well, I should say, so think about it this way. The most important surfs that people had were religious. So there were two rules. One, only royalty could surf.
So originally it was for the aristocracy and it was a protected activity. If you surfed and you weren't royalty, they'd kill you. So that's one part of it. The other part was, is that people surfed on important days. People surf basically on their high holy days, they would go out and surf. So the purity of surfing, I mean, if you think about, I guess, the continuity of something, there's definitely something still to that, that it came out of
that it was considered sacred.
Jesse French
Yeah. I'm going to jump in like right now. Yeah. I've surfed one time in my life. I'm in Landlock, Colorado, so I'm totally naive. But why was that so? Like, why do you think those people connected? Hey, it's actually this sacred practice that we're going to surf on the most important days. How do you think that was true?
Trevor Olson
because they hadn't, I appreciate you saying that, because I hadn't thought about it, thought about it. It's because they believe that God was in the ocean. So the, they believe that God was in the ocean. And for them, obviously in Hawaii, they understand that the ocean is kind of their entire life. And so they believed that it was one, if not the great God was in the ocean. So when they went out into the ocean,
and surfed in the ocean, they were achieving a state of harmony. and they were entering, it was an act of participation. It may have even been an active worship. Yeah. Yeah. What happens when people first learn to surface, they do it correctly. So if you've ever seen somebody learn to surf, they always look the same way. They look jubilant, they look giddy and they look pleased. So
those characteristics, that is the reality of it. But when you introduce resource scarcity into it.
Jesse French
Yeah. And you mean like, what do mean by that? By just like access to waves, like costs to get it? Like, what do you mean?
Trevor Olson
Jesse think about those old gang videos where you see somebody out of beach take off on a wave There's two or three other people that take off on the way with them. They're going along Pretty soon one of them has to dodge somebody that's coming towards them The guy next to him run somebody over another person takes off They fall they knock off pretty soon the original people on the wave aren't even on the way of it. It's the resource scarcity has
basically come to define surfing in all of the major places in the world where people surf.
Jesse French
for so much desire. There's so many, there's so much people there. Like the situation of, I'm just going to go surf by myself in this, you know, unoccupied areas is super rare. Is that what
Trevor Olson
You're saying. Exactly. For the vast majority of surfers, there are not even close to enough waves to go around. Okay. So that begins to assert itself. That often becomes the primary influence of how the person ends up surfing. what happens down the road. like in high school and then college, I basically just got to the point where I could swim better. I had
Better animal spirits telling me where the next wave was coming from, you know, stuff like that kind of kept me ahead of the game. But now there really is no way to stay ahead of the game. You're out there with so many other people or people that are so good. Say like, if you surf in Hawaii, was out in Hawaii one time and I was out there for four hours and there wasn't a single wave that went unwritten. And there was only about 20 guys. So.
Jesse French
No way.
Trevor Olson
even if you're in a smaller group, you still are at the point where, and this is where the deeper magic sort of almost grinds to a halt in a lot of people's lives. I have been one of them. Once you can no longer really do the activity at anything like the rate that your heart wants to, that's where these big, you're confronted with these big, big decisions. And if say like, if you're a frother in high school,
Or you decided to go to UCSD, see, could serve in college. mean, I just ended up becoming confrontational. just became like anybody else out there where once I'd served out there long enough, other people needed to get out of my way. And that's kind of where I left it before I went to the East coast for grad school.
Jesse French
Like sort of this attitude of like, love this on one hand, I'm good at it. I really enjoy it. But in order to experience it, I am going to have to like fight for it, like confrontationally and crawl and scratch and make my way through the crowd for this to have happened to be.
Trevor Olson
100 percent. Surfing ends up becoming, in some strange way, thinking about it in terms of say like where it got its start. It's very hierarchical and so surfing ends up being a lot about power and control. So the hierarchies in established surf spots oftentimes are almost like this, it's interesting to think about it today, some potential reincarnation of the original Hawaiian structure.
Jesse French
Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So keep going. then you leave California and go out to the East coast.
Trevor Olson
yeah, yeah, I left. mean, I knew I needed to get out of California. It ended up working out really well, but surfing wise, it was almost a total hiatus because I mean, in Virginia Beach, not too far away from where you guys are going to be in Richmond, if you drove out there on a break, it'd be a long break, but if you drove out there, you would see a very flat ocean. I mean, the only surf that's coming into Virginia Beach is coming up from the hurricanes off of
the Florida and the Caribbean. So I mean, we're talking like literal handful of times surfing for the vast majority of school. And then when I went to New Hampshire and lived and worked in this recovery community, even less surface up there per se. mean, there's big storms coming down from Newfoundland and Greenland, but the water is so cold at that point that it can actually get below freezing when you factor in the salt water, reducing that freezing temperature.
So it's just brutally bitter activity up there. the people that I lived and worked with were not surfers. So I would surf some, when I came back, but it wasn't really until coming back to San Diego that I sort of. Re-encountered it and eight years had gone by. So as you can imagine, there was a layeredness to how much time had gone by and how much I had changed. That was, it was difficult. Honestly, it's still unraveling.
be really what it is is just how much my life had been uplifted by the Lord while I was gone, coming back into contact with, you know, like a dominant confrontational, you know, highly, highly competitive and frankly, consumptive way that I used to serve.
Jesse French
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As you're talking, Trevor, I appreciate like you sharing this part of it and the response of it makes sense to me in the sense of like, look, you're a teenager, you fall in love with this. It is this wonderful source of confidence and joy and you love it. And so like the desire for more of that, especially I would say in our twenties, you know, is like ramping up super high. so.
I hear that and I'm like, that makes sense. And it's at your disposal. And I'm sure some of the challenging disconnect is like, I love this. Yes, the ocean is right here, but there is this confounding both like presence of other people that I have to navigate and kind of compete against. And so that response makes sense to me. I love that you use the word scarcity of resources because it, as I'm trying to think about some of the things that I love, like fishing is probably the best analogy in comparison that resonates. I,
I can turn in when I drive up to the river of like, there is only so much space and how I turn into a huge jerk when I feel like that's constricted upon when other people don't follow the etiquette of like, and then it's born out what you're saying. like, I love this. I want there to be enough and I'm afraid that there isn't. And so I'm going to like ramp up or be a jerk or, you know, try to claw out my little domain for it. And so I just wonder.
As people are listening, obviously not everyone is our surfers, but I wonder what that category of scarcity around when we experience something that we love that makes us come alive, how we have our own ways of navigating the scarcity of that, of like, we love this, we want this, and there's not enough of it maybe for as much as that we would crave. Does that make sense?
Trevor Olson
What you notice with you say like go to Hawaii is that people there have a totally different mentality about what they're doing. And this is what was convicting since interestingly enough, I don't surf as much now as I used to, but I surf in more places. So I've surfed in Hawaii a couple of times. I surfed in Mexico recently at this really hairy wave. And then I surfed with you guys before and then recently in Oregon and then
I'm going to go to endo Hawaii, particularly they view it as a form of basically spiritual participation. So as you can imagine, it has nothing to do or not to do with resource abundance or scarcity. And that was convicting. I would go out there and marry these guys.
Older guys, younger guys. mean, the younger guys are pretty frothy too.
Jesse French
Hold on. What does frothy
Trevor Olson
Frothy is a way of talking about basically when there's a lot of waves it creates a lot of froth in the water. And so a person who's frothy is basically somebody who's chomping at the bit. know? They're like the foam. They're just, they're in motion. Yeah. It's a good one. It's a good one. So these guys in Hawaii, the guys and gals, there's just so many people out there. They go out there and most of them are
basically detached from how many waves they catch. It's not to say that they don't want to catch the waves. It's to say that what they're doing is they're so successfully actually participating in the spiritual reality of what's going on out there that they surf, they're surfing regardless of how many waves they catch. Hawaii is now infamous for being overrun by people from California like me, Brazil, you name it. And yet there are all of these often Hawaiians.
who go out there and they view it as spiritual participation.
Jesse French
You just said they're surfing regardless of how many waves they catch.
Trevor Olson
Yeah. Yeah. They really know they really are. So watch them. It's even more convicting because they're sitting there and you realize that the whole sort of competitive, almost like capitalistic mindset that you have when you're out there is right next to this dude who's doing something different and is actually getting a lot out of it. You're sitting there not getting a lot out of it. And this other guy is actually getting a lot out of it.
Jesse French
So without trying to take something like deeply wise and formalize it, how else would you expand or give language to what it is to participate in what is happening spiritually? Cause I think that image is, as you're talking about that, I'm like, this is totally different than doing an activity for the basis of the adrenaline of catching a wave. When you say participate in that spirituality, like what is that marked by? What is, yeah, put some more words to that, Dren.
Trevor Olson
I think that a lot of what they're doing is pretty fairly heavy duty, general revelation participation. You know, the creational element of it is so strong. Anybody who's ever been in the water really understands that. mean, there's lots of sort of deep bottom lines that express that. A lot of times you just say that you're getting in the water. That's what people say. Yeah. yeah. Think about that one. That one that a lot of times people just say that they're getting in the water.
Jesse French
Interesting.
Trevor Olson
So there's lots of general revelation stuff. Once you begin to view it as like the Hawaiians do as where God is, I think a lot of what they're doing, I mean, don't get me wrong. I have one friend who I've talked to at length about this. His family is from there. He surfs in a similar way here, which is really striking. A lot of times he almost goes out there to do business with God. So sometimes he gets so wrapped up in whatever's going on in his life or him.
God that he just stops catching waves. And that was even more convicting at one point, because he used to be died hard with, you know, like me, but he has already moved on. And so anyway, I think too, once you're like a lot of those people and why who really believe they really believe that God's out there, then it becomes like this frankly, spiritual experience.
Jesse French
Yeah. Like an actual spiritual practice.
Trevor Olson
Yes. That's what it looks like and feels like. And that's what they, in a very understated Hawaiian way, if you could get them to talk about it, that's what they tell you. Yeah, that's what they.
Jesse French
And I love that fact too, of that it is understated, that it's not like, I'm filling in the blanks, that it's, they're not screaming it from the rooftops of like, Hey, check out this sweet practice that I do. And isn't it awesome? It's like, no, this is, you can twist my arm into talking about it, but this is deeply private and meaningful thing that, yeah, that is, that is a broadcast to the world.
Trevor Olson
Well, one of the best things about surfing is surfing is an honor culture. It goes back to a part of Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian culture having so much to do with honor. There's also an extent in Hawaii because of how extraterrestrial those waves are that they have channeled some of the warrior culture of Hawaii into surfing because those waves, it takes courage and a lot of routine does not rely on courage, but once the waves
get to a certain point, either in your skill set or just on actual point of fact, it comes down to courage. So the mix of the honor plus the increasing mix of courage that's required as the waves get bigger and bigger, it's a good combo.
Jesse French
Yeah. Trevor, I'd to hear your thoughts around the invitation or the application from what you described around surfing in this way, specifically in this posture of participation where it is marked by the participation in what God is doing, the openness to His presence. How might that same posture be pursued or adopted?
for us non-surfers. I'm sure there's particularities to surfing the ocean that are not transferable, but I think what you have been talking about of the space and this practice of our life where there is driven by more than just the achievement or frankly, even more than high enjoyment levels as the end all be all. How might the non-surfers listening of which I'm one of them receive some of the invitation into the other spaces of life where it could hold that potential?
Trevor Olson
I think one of the things to your point, Jesse, and it's really interesting how say like, if you do it, she surf in a childlike way, you really get it. And then if you digress from that in any particular direction, you know, competitively commercially for status or even like I did too, just to try and escape what was going on on the shore, you end up outside of what's going on. So I think the interesting thing about surfing is.
If you do it in a childlike way, it's a revelation. That's the fundamental thing that's going on out there. Whenever anybody I think actually gets into the water, that in and of itself, for those of us who are born on land is revelation. Basically everybody gets it. Everybody sort of knows that for what it is. When you stand up on a board and you're almost walking on water, you know, that's a revelation. When you are sitting out there floating on a board.
Surrounded by say like the kind of landscape that we were surrounded by there in October. That's a revelation You know, there's so much that's actually just being revealed like this friend of mine. He surfs in a very receptive posture I do not certain a receptive posture. I'm out there to make it happen. I'm out there to push myself I mean, that's a beautiful thing too. There's a part of it that you can commune with him that way also but
I think the thing that's really going on, like when people have written about the ocean, even say in scripture, when you get close to the water, the water itself is revelation. you know, depending on your theological beliefs and understandings, water itself can embody other things. I mean, a huge chunk of the world, the Christian world believes that water can embody something else. So anyway.
I think that the strange weird thing about surfing is when you're doing it, you have to do it so as to be able to receive the revelation. That's what you've got to do. It's whether that looks like that's what you're supposed to be doing or not. think that's a big part of it.
Jesse French
Those are great words, Trevor. I think the description of a childlike state, the description of a posture of receptivity, like those, as you say those, I would imagine all of us can in our minds be like, I know what he's talking about, right? Like as we do reflect on our own life or think about children now, like those are a really, really vivid description. And I think that gives me hope because I think that posture of receiving, that posture of being childlike.
is possible, Whether you're fly-fishing, whether you're woodworking, whether you're working on a car, like fill in the blank for, you know, whatever we're spending our time on. I think that way of engaging that, I think that invitation stands and feels like is given by God to us.
Trevor Olson
So some of the almost archetypes within surfing, there's one particular archetype. It's a guy who's surfed for a long time. So then, you know, he learned to surf before it got crowded. So he caught a lot of waves and now he's surfing in places that are impossibly crowded. There are these guys throughout the world. There's one guy in particular in Manhattan Beach that comes to mind. What he tells people is he says,
Surfing is about seeing how much fun you can possibly have. And that's kind of what you're saying. And that's kind of what you're really supposed to be doing in the initiated sense. And so he ends up surfing ridiculously. Like he's trying to learn to do handstands at, I think he's like 70, late seventies, early eighties. He wants other people to be on the wave with him. He dresses up in costumes and stuff like that. And so
The amount of joy that you guys had in October was part of why, what makes it the best session that I've had this last year. And it's a real shift from a difficult sport that exists in relative scarcity that is itself very ephemeral. You know, you're only on the way for a few seconds. It's a shift to basically relating to the wonder of what's going on via joy. And so there's an archetype of guy out there.
who would tell you the whole point is to just have as much fun as you can possibly can.
Jesse French
Yeah. Yeah. That guy feels like the sage, right? Who is surfed enough to actually say, this is the peak of it, to participate as fully as I can and to wring every drop of joy that might be possible through it. Trevor, I'm going to, end with this question. You leave tomorrow to Indonesia, Indo, as you've referred to it. What are your hopes for that trip? Obviously there's probably multi-layers there, but what are your hopes as you get to spend an extended time? surfing out there.
Trevor Olson
Well, this is some sort of a, preparatory gift, think, Jesse in view. thank you for that. Part of what it's made me think about is I don't have a followup yet as strong as my first act. My first act was just almost like pure drive. It tapped into a drive that was so strong that, I mean, there were days down at blacks where I
Sure. I caught more waves than anybody else. And this is like the most competitive spot in San Diego. There were months. I know I was the person who surfed the most out there. It was just this incredible tap of drive. I don't really have a follow up act in surfing yet. There's lots of other parts of my life that have, I guess I would say actually almost every other part of my life, significant part of my life has just gone forward, but not surfing.
If you ever want to read a beautiful book about surfing, there's a guy who wrote a book called Barbarian Days. It's actually kind of made its way into the mainstream. It was a best seller at one point. He writes for the New Yorker. So he has the ability to communicate. And he also is probably the most lucky surfer in the history of the world. So his autobiography is just riveting as an artifact, like this most blessed, luck-wise artifact in surf culture. But what he writes about is.
basically getting to the point where the revelation is overcome you. And he's got all these various points. He wrote a chapter on near-death experiences up in San Francisco, where he was almost always drowning because the waves up there are like the ones out in that you saw in Washington. mean, they are, they're stupendous. He has chapters about surfing in South Africa during apartheid and just
grieving the suffering of this world while surfing these beautiful cold waves. But he also has these everyday moments where he's been at it for so long and he successfully contemplated it to the degree where he basically begins to hit it head on. The actual, you know, the revelation of God himself out there. So I think what I'm wanting when I go out there really is just to become
Like this friend of mine who can go surf and does it in a way where he has been transposed from, know, like what you were saying, just the love of the love of being as hardcore as you could possibly be to something completely different now. That's my prayer is just that I would end up being able to surf again because at this point I've sort of lived in this limbo where I realized, you know what?
I don't actually really want to fight anybody more, but I don't know really what to do instead. So I guess I'm good. My prayer would be that the instead would, ⁓ that I would come by on there.
Jesse French
Thanks Trev for that. Yeah. Yeah. For the articulation of that hope and that honesty around your trip. And just for this conversation, man, you, you've given us so much to think about. And I think the poetic invitation that you offered is one I'm grateful for. And yeah, thank you, buddy. Appreciate your time and your wisdom.
Trevor Olson
Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for the interest in it, Jesse, and the, you know, now the benefits that will emerge from it in my life for sure. Thank you too.
Jesse French
You bet. think we should do follow up post Indo trip and get a little post trip reaction from you.
Trevor Olson
So I also want to make a plug for a five or six person podcast that does a post mortem on your one surf session because.
Jesse French
It wouldn't need to be five or six guys that would be needed and my word so fun. That would be a blast. Awesome. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate you,
Trevor Olson
Take care, see ya.