Whispering Gallery At Log Cabins
Perhaps you're familiar with what a "whispering gallery" is, and perhaps you're not.
If you are not, then perhaps you can click
HERE to see what Wikipedia has to say about it, or you can just take my word for things that a whispering gallery operates via
the specialized shape of a smooth surface to take otherwise faint sounds and project them across a distance, loud and clear, to somewhere that they otherwise would be inaudible.
Whispering galleries are uncanny things, and can give you a shiver of experienced weirdness when you encounter one, and in general, they fall under the heading of strange and wonderful things that are very rare and unique, and these are the kinds of things I've always been drawn to.
So ok.
So what's that got to do with Log Cabins?
Log Cabins is a surfspot.
On the North Shore of Oahu.
And in the winter, if the swell angle is good and strong from the north, and has a bit of substance to it, Log Cabins can rival Pipeline in intensity and hollowness.
And it's an unruly motherfucker, too.
Pipe works like a machine on good days. Wave after wave after wave. Same thing, over and over. Impossibly throaty barrels spitting across a murderously-shallow reef.
But Log Cabins doesn't work that way.
Log Cabins has an attitude problem, and although it works across an equally-murderous (or, believe it or not, perhaps even
more murderous) stretch of reef, it in no way resembles a machine. It does
not do the same thing, over and over and over.
Three or five wave set comes in at Log Cabins, and you'd best be damn good and careful which one you go for, because a lot of them are going to slam shut or otherwise make your life unpleasant. Log Cabins is a mean-spirited motherfucker. Log Cabins wants to
hurt you.
But it's
hollow, and when one comes in with the right shape, then you're in for some barrel time.
Seriously round, seriously throaty, slab-lipped barrels, exploding ferociously across a very shallow stretch of highly-convoluted basalt reef.
HisssssBOOOM!
So ok. So why are you telling us all of this, MacLaren?
Medium-size day. North Shore medium-size Log Cabins. Maybe five to seven foot Hawaiian scale.
Not giant by any stretch of the imagination, but not inconsequential, either.
Late takeoff, down to the bottom knifing it around to the right, set the line with care, and the canopy develops, folds, and encases.
And, as any of you who have been around such waves already knows, when a wave like that blows up, it's
loud. Really puts out the sound. Detonations are not quiet things, and when Log Cabins comes over properly, it
detonates.
Ok.
And on this particular day, and on this particular wave, the water out in front was pretty slick-smooth. No garble, no texture, no nothing. Smooth even surface. And the lip's coming down out there just a little bit in front of me, and I'm looking out of this thing like you'd look out of a tunnel (which of course is exactly what it was), and in that restricted little view of the outside world, a kid comes into view, paddling back outside, out on the shoulder of the wave I was inside of, and he looks over, right down the centerline of the tube, sees me in there, and immediately responds to the spontaneous joy of the moment with wide eyes, broad toothy smile, and a low funny-sounding giggle.
Now remember here, I'm
inside of this thing, and it's
BOOMING as it's detonating all around me.
And yet, somehow, that low weird little giggle of joy that this kid made when he saw me from twenty yards away was transported and focused by the perfect curves and encasing hollowness of the wave, to where I was all crouched over working my line through what was blowing up all around me, and was rendered to my unbelieving ears as a perfectly audible sound, as loud and clear as if he was standing right next to me, and giggling into my ear.
It was one of the weirdest goddamned things I've ever encountered in my life, and it was over almost as soon as it began.
The kid was gone from view up and over the wave, I find myself hurtling back out of the encasement that I'd just entered, and pull the board up and over the flattening shoulder, and that's the end of that.
Not even sure what happened to the kid. It wasn't crowded or anything (Log Cabins almost never was, back in those days), but I'm no good with recognizing people, and I'm out here
surfing, as opposed to socializing, anyway, and the moment was gone along with the source of that unforgettable low giggle.
But even though it was over, it burned itself into the folds of my mind as if with a branding-iron.
Nothing like it had ever happened to me before, and nothing like it has ever happened to me again.
Everything aligned perfectly for one brief second, and then was gone forever, never to return.
A whispering gallery. A goddamned whispering gallery at Log Fucking Cabins.
Some times.....