What's So Great About The Great Outdoors?

A couple months back, I got a phone call from a guy—let’s call him Mr. Muir—who runs a surfy nonprofit focused on environmental causes.

- Justin Housman

It’s an organization you’ve probably heard of, trying their damnedest to preserve great surf spots around the world from threats you had no idea even existed. “You want them on that wall; you need them on that wall,” as Jack Nicholson would say.

Mr. Muir was frustrated and looking for a little advice from someone embedded in surf media. He explained that most of the donations his organization receives for ocean-related causes come from people who have never set foot on a surfboard, and, inexplicably, getting hardcore surfers to care about protecting the ocean has proven to be extremely difficult. Mr. Muir wanted to know why.

I pondered his question for a minute, glanced out the window at my gas-guzzling pickup in the driveway, and felt the tiniest (very fleeting, I assure you) pang of guilt as a realization began to dawn on me. While I may not be the biggest eco-warrior out there, I do care deeply about the state of the oceans and often wring my hands in worry about ever-increasing threats to the environment, both in the ocean and on land. But my love of surfing somehow feels completely separate from any concerns I have about the state of the oceans. I could be in the middle of writing an article about horrid oceanic pollutants, but if my local cam looks good, I’d still rush out for a few waves, completely forgetting about whatever watery ecological disaster I’d been consumed with moments before. It’s as if my environmentalism and my life as a surfer are two entirely compartmentalized things, which seems contradictory for someone who gets their kicks in the great outdoors. But perhaps being a surfer doesn’t automatically make one an outdoorsperson, and that’s the key to understanding the cause of Mr. Muir’s frustration.