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ON THE SHORES OF THE SKRAELINGS

Stay Wild

A Sitka Surf Adventure

You don’t hear much about surfing in Newfoundland. 

It’s not because there aren’t any waves. There are plenty of waves. And it’s not because it’s cold. It’s cold enough that great white hunks of ice float past the coast after shearing away from Greenland and being carried off by the currents. It’s mostly because Newfoundlanders are unusually suspicious of anyone from the “Great Away.” The few surfers of The Rock, as this harsh-weathered island is often known, have never felt inclined to set up surf schools or post their spots all over the Internet. If you want to find waves here, you will, but you’ll be on your own, which only adds to the allure of experiencing an adventure few have been on. 

Newfoundland, if you’re not familiar with it, is the easternmost landmass in North America and boasts the North Atlantic Ocean as its playground. It’s big—bigger than Ireland, almost as big as England. Newfoundland declared itself a self-governing colony of the British Empire, and remained so until 1949, when it reluctantly became a province of Canada. The glaciers scraped its bones bare in the last Ice Age, leaving what one nineteenth-century visitor called a “monstrous mass of rock and gravel, almost without soil, like a strange thing from the bottom of the great deep, lifted up suddenly into sunshine and storm, but belonging to the watery darkness out of which it has been reared.” 

Buffeted by storms and blizzards, Newfoundland isn’t an easy place to make a life—not then, and certainly not now. Sometime long ago, a group of people that archaeologists refer to as the Maritime Archaics settled on the island, surviving by hunting birds and seals. Later, it became the domain of the ancestral Mi’kmaq and Beothuk, an indigenous group who drew their life from the land. Around 1000 C.E., the ships of the Vikings broke into the waters of Newfoundland. The voyage was led by Leif Erikson, more popularly known as Leif the Lucky. It was he, not Christopher Columbus, who should be credited with the discovery of the New World. After a harrowing journey, he led his ragged crew ashore the beach of L’Anse aux Meadows, setting in motion a long chain of events that would result in the Beothuk’s unhappy ending. 

In the years following Leif’s landing, a group of Viking voyagers made a determined effort to establish a permanent habitation. One hundred and sixty potential settlers landed in plank-hulled ships and set to work building sod houses, workshops, a smith-works, and an iron smelter. To augment their stores, they traded with the island’s original inhabitants, who they called Skraelings, or Wretches. Unfortunately, the cross-cultural relationship eventually deteriorated, and after three hard winters, the Viking colony ended in violence and failure, becoming a little-known footnote of history. 

Almost 500 years later, the Europeans again breached the shores of Newfoundland and were able to successfully establish a permanent residence. In 1497, the seafarer John Cabot claimed the island for England, giving it the name it bears today, “New Founde Land.” The seas around the island were incomparably rich, and lore tells that the icy ocean was so thick with fish you could lower a basket into the water and retrieve it bearing an outrageously large catch. A lucrative salt cod industry soon developed, with seasonal fishing camps springing up in the island’s many coves and bays. In time, the English residents became year-round fisherman, providing life for their communities in what previously seemed a barren and unforgiving land. For the following centuries, Newfoundland remained a sparsely populated realm of fish ports and outpost towns, its people sturdy, resourceful, and always keeping a weather eye to the sea. The Beothuk, decimated by disease and colonial violence, died out completely. Shanawdithit, the last full-blooded survivor, died of tuberculosis in 1829. 

There were other industries that sprung up over the years, such as sealing, mining, and most recently, drilling for oil from giant offshore rigs. For the most part, fishing was the hard labor that paid the bills. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the cod fishing industry unfortunately collapsed; with stocks a fraction of what they once were, the Canadian government declared a moratorium on cod fishing in 1992, putting tens of thousands of Newfoundlanders out of work with the stroke of a pen. Like I said, it’s never been easy in this hostile region and probably never will be.

Subsequently, the Atlantic that bounds up against Newfoundland’s margins is a restless mistress, as I’m sure Leif and his shipmates would have attested to. It’s been said that a restless sea means waves to be found, so if you’re up for a surf trip that’s off the beaten path, here’s all you need to know: Get your warmest wetsuit and a few sturdy boards, book your passage to St. John’s, walk out of the terminal, get a cab, ask the cabbie to help you find someone who will rent you a used truck with a good set of tires, unfold the map, then… GO.

Once you’re out on your own, and chances are you will be, set up camp, wait for the waves to come and the wind to die, and then reconnoiter the glories of the shore. Take your pick of heaving slab, rolling point, or rampy beach break. If there are any locals out, show respect and remember that you’re very much from the Great Away. And, as I’m sure they’ll readily confirm, people from the Great Away have been imposing their ideas on the island and its inhabitants for a thousand years. And then, fucking surf. Surf until you’re so cold that your fingers won’t grab the rails anymore. Come in, put your sweater on, pack up the tent, and drive through the outpost towns, wind-warped shacks, and piles of weather-beaten lobster traps. At sunset, park the truck downtown and buy a couple of locals a round of stiff drinks. Then raise those glasses to everyone—from Skraelings to Vikings to shivering fishermen—all those who discovered Newfoundland and the secrets to taming that beautiful devil’s shores. 

sitka.ca

4th of July Kook Out!

Stay Wild

New Belgium Brewing & Stay Wild Magazine present...

The 4th of July KOOK OUT!

A Surf Contest & Party for Total Kooks.

Pacific City // On The Beach // July 4th // 12-4pm

Being a kook is great! Kooks are open-minded and fearlessly learning to live with each new wave that comes their way. Let's kook out together on the 4th of July and celebrate NW Cold-Water Surf Culture!!

Prizes will be awarded for the most kooked-out tricks, costumes, and styles. You'll want in on this action since the prizes are coming from our buddies at Mowgli Surf, Stanley, Aloha Sunday, Sitka Surf, and more...

If it gets cold you can just soak in a portable hot tub provided by the Original Nomad.

Awesome Live Surfy Music in the sand next to the crashing the waves (so dangerous!) by Ed Ghost Tucker

((( Stay Wild Summer Issue )))

The KOOK OUT will be the first chance to get your sandy hands on the latest issue of Stay Wild.


AFTER PARTY ALERT!!!!

JULY 5th!

Join us for a day of environmental stewardship as we team-up with Surfrider's Portland chapter and New Belgium Brewing for the first Oswald West Action Day at Short Sands. Someone has to clean up all those exploded fireworks! Might as well be us, right? RSVP today >>>


Oregon Sea Slugs

Stay Wild

We made this simple little movie about surfing in Oregon for these very important reasons:

1- No reason, really.

2- To show you how much fun the KOOK OUT surf contest and party will be this 4th of July.

3- To highlight some of the Burton goods we'll be giving away this year on Instagram.

4- So we'd have a reason to say "Logs Waves Not Forests!"

are your personal vibes real?

Stay Wild

Everything you ever wanted to know about Aura Photography but were too tripped out to ask.
An interview with Christina Lonsdale of Radiant Human

 

What was it like growing up in a hippy commune?

It was exactly what you would imagine; naked people, carob chips, and the great outdoors. I didn’t have a lunch box, I had a basket, and my name was Savatri, not Christina.

When you left home did you rebel against all that hippy shit?

I started rebelling when everything fell apart and we moved to California. This is when I went to public school for the first time, and I had a complete melt down because my mother refused to buy me white bread and bologna. It was the beginning of the end. I eventually moved to Los Angeles, joined a corporation, and embraced fashion.

Who turned you onto aura photography?

Auras and energy are pretty common dinner table talk with my parents. My mother actually paints auras and spirits that she sees in her meditations and my dad used to hang out with a lady who channeled the wizard Merlin - no joke. It was my dear friends Lisa Butterworth and Meredith Jenks that took me to get my first aura photo, though. It was an amazing experience and everything just clicked for me. I’ve always enjoyed vibey science and interactive art, so this was a perfect platform for me to explore my culture in a way that made sense to me.

What is an Aura?

It is an electromagnetic field that surrounds the body.

How does the camera capture a person’s aura?

There are two hand sensors that translate your electromagnetic energy to a vibrational frequency, which then gets matched to a color (because color also has a vibrational frequency), and this color comes out as a second exposure on an instant polaroid photo.

What do the colors mean?

This is where the science ends, and we enter the fascinating world of color theory. I would have to write a book to tell you what all the colors mean, but I will give you the abbreviated version (but keep in mind abbreviations are always limited). Red is passionate and physical, orange is creative and good with people, yellow is optimistic and uninhibited, tan loves a to do list and a schedule, green is goal-oriented and deals with growth, blue is depth of emotion, trust, and loyalty, purple is the visionary, and white is higher awareness.

Are the aura colors some hippy mood ring magic, or are they actual science magic?

This is actual science magic. Mood rings deal with temperature, whereas this aura camera is an interactive tool that deals precisely with your natural electricity.

The Radiant Human dome studio is available for pop-ups and private events anywhere in the world.
radianthuman.com  @radianthuman_