Rockaway: Surfing Headlong into a New Life

by Diane Cardwell

Overview

The inspirational story of one woman learning to surf and creating a new life in gritty, eccentric Rockaway Beach

Unmoored by a failed marriage and disconnected from her high-octane life in the city, Diane Cardwell finds herself staring at a small group of surfers coasting through mellow waves toward shore—and senses something shift. Rockaway is the riveting, joyful story of one woman’s reinvention—beginning with Cardwell taking the A Train to Rockaway, a neglected spit of land dangling off New York City into the Atlantic Ocean. She finds a teacher, buys a tiny bungalow, and throws her not-overly-athletic self headlong into learning the inner workings and rhythms of waves and the muscle development and coordination needed to ride them.

As Cardwell begins to find her balance in the water and out, superstorm Sandy hits, sending her into the maelstrom in search of safer ground. In the aftermath, the community comes together and rebuilds, rekindling its bacchanalian spirit as a historic surfing community, one with its own quirky codes and surf culture. And Cardwell’s surfing takes off as she finds a true home among her fellow passionate longboarders at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, living out “the most joyful path through life.”

Rockaway is a stirring story of inner salvation sought through a challenging physical pursuit—and of learning to accept the idea of a complete reset, no matter when in life it comes.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358561965
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	524,251
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

DIANE CARDWELL is an award-winning journalist who has covered a variety of subjects, including alternative energy, popular culture, politics, crime, and New York’s hospitality industry. A former reporter for the New York Times, she was among the inaugural writers of “Portraits of Grief,” the Times’s signature profiles of those killed in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, and helped found Vibe. She lives, gardens, and surfs in Rockaway Beach, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Prologue:
Over the Falls

February 2013

Still I must on; for I am as a weed
Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam to sail
Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.
     —Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Is this how it ends?
     The thought burned through my head, surprising and unbidden. I was straddling a surfboard in a thrashing ocean, breathless and struggling to stay upright, my arms so tired and aching I could barely lift them. Looking up, I saw my friends waiting for me on the shore, but they and the palm trees lining the cliffs all appeared to be receding. I’d been trying to get back to the beach for what felt like an eternity, and every time I took a moment’s rest the heaving aquamarine waters tugged me farther away from the stretch of sand I needed to reach. I felt overwhelmed and small, as if in the clutches of a liquid bully tossing me this way and that, while wind whipped my dark, wet curls against my cheeks, salt spray stung my eyes, and surging water plugged my ears and gushed into my mouth and up my nose. The current was pulling me parallel to the coast, where bulkheads of razor-sharp coral and rocks could shred my flesh like a cat-o’-nine-tails. As my body started to fail, it dawned on me for the first time that I might not make it back.
     Just an hour before, I’d been relaxed and happy. I’d arrived at the beach near the northwest corner of Puerto Rico with a friend, a feisty, green-eyed brunette I’d met back home as I’d haplessly tried to learn to surf over the past few years. She was not only my regular buddy in the waves but also one of the first new friends I’d made in a decade—part of the social life I was building as I slowly emerged from the wreckage of a divorce. Rented boards in hand, we were excited to escape the February chill of New York City and the rubble-strewn mess of my neighborhood in Rockaway Beach, still in recovery from the battering of Superstorm Sandy. Standing under the canopy of fanning leaves in the dirt parking lot overlooking the beach, we ran into a few friends from Rockaway who had just finished their sessions. Sure, it was a little choppy, with the swirl of the current making spirals of white foam amid the translucent peaks, but the waves were weaker than they looked, one of them said, and not much to worry about.
     “Watch out for the current, though,” another friend told us. “Make sure you don’t let it take you out to the left. Just paddle at an angle the other way.”
     Maybe I shouldn’t do this, I’d thought, eyeing the waves as they reared up and twisted before violently crashing toward the shore. But I’d quickly silenced that voice. As long as I kept to the right, I’d be fine. I’d always been able to handle myself in the ocean at home on the East Coast, and I was aching for the balm of wild water on my skin—I just couldn’t resist.
     Plus I needed this break from the rest of my life, which felt in shambles. Over the past five years I’d been lashed by loss after loss—my marriage, my father, my chances of bearing a child. I was, in every sense of the word, adrift.
     Surfing, despite my distinct lack of aptitude and struggles to find my balance in the ocean, consistently brought me joy and a sense of purpose. On a surfboard I could feel powerful and free and in tune with the universe, if only for an instant. The rest of the time I felt the opposite.
     And now there was a clear and present danger confronting me. After I had stepped into the warm, inviting water sliding over the sand, I had focused so intently on charging through the walls of foam lining up in front of me that I hadn’t noticed the current, stronger than I realized, taking me exactly where I didn’t want to go: to the left.
     So despite my efforts to paddle back, I was now stuck “outside”—the term surfers use for the zone beyond where the waves are breaking—and far from where I could safely return to shore. My surf buddy was nowhere to be seen in the water, having probably, and wisely, ditched the effort sooner. It doesn’t matter how many people you’re surfing with, I thought. In the end you’re alone, just you and the ocean.
     What if I can’t get in by myself? I wondered as I contemplated my predicament. I closed my eyes and saw an unlikely fever-dream pastiche of lost-at-sea images: sunburned survivors found in life rafts, having subsisted on raw fish, birds, and their own urine; old-style paintings of half-nude women, shipwrecked and flung upon the sand; headlines about teenagers who’d fallen prey to rip tides, seemingly every year, in the Rockaways; the Andrea Gail, buffeted by mammoth seas before sinking; Gilligan and the Skipper losing control of the S.S. Minnow on what was supposed to be a three-hour tour.
     I peered at the beach. I was even farther from my friends, who now looked like stick figures on the sand. Can they tell I’m in trouble? Can they call in a rescue? Can I hold on long enough, or will I get swept out to sea? Are there sharks out there?
     Resting, I tried to tamp down the rising sense of dread, but I couldn’t keep other kinds of doubts from creeping in. Maybe I was just not meant for this. If I’d so wrongly assumed I was ready for this ocean, I might very well have been wrongly convinced that I could actually have a roll-with-the-swells surfer’s life—that I could, in middle age, pivot from my get-ahead, career-focused existence to something that seemed more meaningful. Maybe it was too late for that, just like it was too late to save my marriage, too late to get pregnant, too late to find another great love. I was clinging to a rented surfboard and maybe to a rented life—one I could dip into from time to time but couldn’t really make my own. I looked around and took in the spectacular beauty of the place, seeing how close to and yet still so far from safety I was. What a ridiculous place to die.
     Suddenly something in me snapped. So what? So what if I didn’t have the answers, or a partner, or the picture-perfect life I thought I was building? I’d bought, not rented, this new life, and now I had to live it. You got yourself into this mess, and it’s up to you—and you alone—to get out of it.
     I sat up and took a deep breath as I arched my back and stretched out my chest, squeezing my shoulder blades together and shutting my eyes against the brilliance of the sky. Overcome, I yelled out, “No, not now,” words that were immediately swallowed by the water’s roar. I flopped back down on the board and began pulling my arms through the chop, hardly able to hold up my chest and head but willing myself to ignore the soreness and near paralysis settling into my shoulders, arms, and back. “You can do this,” I chanted, over and over, like a mantra, cackling at how insane and uncool I must have looked—a million miles away from one of those sinewy surf babes I was trying to become. “Dig deeper!”
     Eventually I cast an eye toward the shore and saw the stack of logs that doubled as stairs between the beach and the parking lot and realized that I was almost where I needed to be. Looking out toward the horizon, I noticed waves cresting and threatening to break, waves that looked like they could swallow and pummel me. I needed to get beyond them, where I could maybe catch one or slip back in between them. One began rising up beside me, so I slowly spun the board around and headed toward it with what little strength I had left, thinking I could punch through the lip.
     But the ocean had a different idea. As I began sailing through to the other side, I felt a force, like the hand of Poseidon, grab the tail of my board, spin it around, and thrust it down the crumbling face of the wave. Water churned and rumbled around me as I gripped the edges of the board and lifted my chest, hoping that would keep me afloat and off the ocean floor.
     As I hurtled along, the curtain of water swaddling my head parted and I could see that I was speeding toward the shore, where my friends were jumping up and down, yelling and gesturing for me to stand up and actually surf the wave. But I had noodles for arms and nothing left to launch my cramping body onto my feet. I was missing a shot at the very thing I’d traveled for: a ride on a wave, my skin bathed in sunlight and droplets of warm water. It was a disappointment, but I barely had the energy to care. As I neared the beach, I rolled off the board in exhaustion and relief, dragged it out of the water, and dropped it in the sand, then hunched over to rest my elbows on my knees. I stayed there, panting, and listened to my heartbeat slow as the waves crashed and receded somewhere behind me and a sense of security returned. I’d survived the ordeal with no real harm—at least not to my body. I would live to surf another day, and that, in this moment, was all that mattered.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Over the Falls vii

Part I At Sea

1 First Light 3

2 Hooked 15

3 Run Aground 40

4 In the Shaping Bay 59

Part II Five Feet High and Rising

5 Taking the Plunge 83

6 Chasing Daylight 104

7 Dropping Anchor 124

8 Hustle and Flow 161

Part III Under the Dome

9 Unmoored 189

10 Treading Water 196

11 In the Curl 215

12 Reeled In 237

Epilogue: Safe Harbor 248

Notes on Sources 253

Acknowledgments 256

Editorial Reviews

Toes to the nose, knees to the chin, Diane Cardwell’s memoir about learning to surf in midlife shows us how to pop up again and again, with style.” —Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway and Swell   “Diane Cardwell’s Rockaway is a remarkably moving, entertaining, honest and heartening memoir of reinvention and resilience.” —Francine Prose, author of Blue Angel and What to Read and Why “Becoming someone new is hard work. Diane Cardwell does not stint. With a reporter’s eye for detail, and rare honesty, she pushes through heartache, self-consciousness, long-held fears, Hurricane Sandy, and innumerable walls of white water. Her progress toward surfing skillfully, love, and an unlikely community is a deeply satisfying ride.” —William Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days “Diane Cardwell’s Rockaway is so invigorating that it makes you want to get outside, try something new, live more fully and freely. This story of a woman following her passion is an inspiring reminder about the possibilities of renewal and reinvention.” —Tova Mirvis, author of The Book of Separation “Surfing is hard, wild, daring, and sometimes dangerous; so is life after heartbreak and divorce. Bravely, Diane Cardwell pushed herself to embrace the unknown—in many ways—and find a new form. What she also found, among the surfers at Rockaway Beach, was joy and community. Rockaway is the inspiring story of her discovery and mastery of a new life.” —Liza Mundy, author of Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II “In this eloquent narrative, the author offers a moving portrait of a woman in search of herself as well as a joyful celebration of physicality, friendship, and the art of surfing. A bighearted and uplifting memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews “Poignant. Written with a warm and conversational style, this is an unusual story of personal triumph, insight into what makes a community stronger, and a reminder that perceived limitations are often self-imposed . . . An offbeat, uplifting account . . . engaging.” —Library Journal “Cardwell’s moving story washes over the reader with its emotionally rich portrayal of the ragged ways we can embrace our vulnerabilities in order to overcome them.” —BookPage “Readers don’t have to surf to be taken away by Cardwell’s story . . . A rich account of living through . . . disaster and rebuilding in its aftermath.” —Publishers Weekly “A moving memoir about reshaping your own destiny.” —New York Post, “30 best summer books to help you escape 2020” “This memoir busts a lot of stereotypes in a delightful way . . . Rockaway is not just a story about starting over, it’s also a treatise on tenacity, on grabbing something you want and absolutely, stubbornly refusing to let go, no matter where it takes you. What an unexpected and inspiring book.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune —

From the Publisher

03/02/2020

Vibe magazine founder and former New York Times reporter Cardwell recounts how she moved to Rockaway Beach, N.Y., after a divorce to pursue her passion for surfing in this detailed story of reinvention. The book spans from 2010 to 2017 and opens as Cardwell—raw after her divorce and feeling she had failed at creating a family—travels to Montauk and watches surfers for the first time. After taking a few lessons, she was hooked. She discusses learning surfing terms like the “turtle roll” (“a way of paddling through breaking waves to get to the outside on a longboard”) and various surfing maneuvers, and she talks about strengthening her body and growing her confidence. “Life really does go on,” she writes. The book’s most engaging sections concern her move to Rockaway Beach, where she bought a house not long before Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012; here, she offers a rich account of living through the disaster and rebuilding in its aftermath. By the end, she has a crew of surfing friends, a new man, and a zest for life. Readers don’t have to surf to be taken away by Cardwell’s story, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt. (June)

Publishers Weekly

03/27/2020

In search of a good story and at a personal crossroads in life, journalist Cardwell stopped by a surf beach in Montauk, Long Island, in 2010. What she saw changed everything for her—the ease and grace of surfers, the combination of the sun and the water, and an entire subculture that was instantly alluring. Putting internal doubts aside, Cardwell left her marriage and city life behind in order to move to a beach bungalow and begin surfing lessons. Her memoir emphasizes her progress as a surfer, but she doesn't shy away from personal introspection. Cardwell's firsthand account of Hurricane Sandy, and how she and her neighbors survived the devastation together is particularly poignant. Written with a warm and conversational style, this is an unusual story of personal triumph, insight into what makes a community stronger, and a reminder that perceived limitations are often self-imposed. VERDICT Readers looking for an offbeat, uplifting account, and those with an interest in surfing or outdoor challenges, should find this engaging. An ideal selection for book groups and recommended for all public library collections.—Janet Davis, Darien P.L., CT

Library Journal

2020-03-23
A journalist’s account of how midlife disappointments fueled an unexpected journey into the world of surfing.

As she entered her 40s, Cardwell, a founder of Vibe magazine and former New York Times reporter, was the picture of success. She had a prestigious newspaper job and a handsome husband she adored. Sadly, just as she and her husband were trying to conceive, they divorced. Devastated, Cardwell spent the next three years mourning lost opportunities for motherhood and wondering whether she would ever “get to be the girl on someone's arm again.” Everything changed when a newspaper assignment took her to Montauk, where she observed a group of surfers—“a secret tribe of magical creatures”—frolicking in the surf. Transfixed, Cardwell suddenly decided she wanted to learn the sport. The impulse shocked her; she was far from athletic. Her first clumsy attempts at surfing made her realize that as much as “the mind was more than willing…the flesh was going to need a lot of work.” She began attending a surfing school in Rockaway Beach and going to the gym, and she quickly developed friendships with other surfers who gave her advice on everything from surfing equipment to how to read the ocean and its rhythms. Less than a year and a half later, the author bought a home there, bringing her closer to the people she had come to know and pulling her away from the Manhattan hustle she thought she could never do without. When Hurricane Sandy flooded her home and neighborhood in October 2012, Cardwell realized that despite the risks of living by the ocean in the age of climate change, she had finally found her tribe and a renewed zest for life. In this eloquent narrative, the author offers a moving portrait of a woman in search of herself as well as a joyful celebration of physicality, friendship, and the art of surfing.

A bighearted and uplifting memoir.

Kirkus Reviews