SEA DREAMS

The Surfing Wilcoxen Family And The Meaning Of Life

BY MATT GEORGE

With over a hundred secret spots left in the Mentawai, which do you choose? And why name them when you are the only guy out? Dylan goes with the flow. Photography by Liquid Barrel

The wild men of the jungle dance in concert with it all. Phantoms of skin and gristle and sweat, stomping and spinning, they trance and expel a deep breathy chant. They are festooned with bright feathers and bamboo shoots and slivers of jungle leaves, the tiny embers from their ceremonial tobacco smoldering in their untamed hair. They are surrounded by a circle of sunburned and grinning Kandui Resort surfing guests. The dance is a treat for the guests on their last night at the resort, but the wild men of the jungle are very real and their performance is very real and there is some confusion about this. Tourists are more used to the insincere. These surf guests who have been staying and surfing at the Kandui resort have had their ten days. The next twenty guests were just arriving at their hotel on the mainland, global travel exhausted, readying for the dawn ferry out to this place across the hundred nautical mile strait to the Mentawai Islands off West Sumatra. The guests watching the dancers at the resort would be shipped back to the mainland and the new guests would be shipped in as they have been like clockwork for years and years. The waves never sleep in the Mentawai. And these waves are the the heartbeat of all who visit or live or work here. And the wild men of the jungle dance in concert with it all.

From his usual place on the small bench across from the bar, the owner of the place, Ray Wilcoxen, watches on as he untangles a snarl of fishing line attached to the prized lure of his ten year old boy, Jaden. A wicked looking thing this lure, smelling of seawater and stained with blood, armed with three treble hooks the boy has sharpened himself. The kid would be up at dawn to try his luck again with his lucky lure. The guests had just finished dining on Jaden’s catches of the day. The new guests would probably dine on his tomorrow’s catch as well. Ray picks at the fishing line with the sure hands and the patient eyes of a father of four and watches the wild dancing men of the jungle with an inward smile. He relates to these men.

Out of long born habit, Ray casts his eyes over the considerable dining hall, looking for anything out of order with the lighting. Ray had wired the entire resort himself. Back breaking work. Stoop labor. Especially trudge hauling the huge black cables that ran to the giant generator down island out of the guests hearing range. Jesus, now there’s a memory, he thinks. But it was all worth it. Sure. Countless surf guests had dined under the soft lights of the high ceiling and drank at the long, polished wooden bar regaling stories of past and present.

The whole place, a surfing Viking’s hall, built on sweat equity. Tons of it. But that’s what it takes if you are going to carve a surfing resort out of an island jungle. And he and his team had done it with their bare hands. It had been a big deal. Yeah. Sure was. And the resort had been running like a tuned piano for years and years now and it was finally paying off. Not that Ray was in it for the money. From the beginning there was more going on for him than the money.Ray looks up above the bar where a heavy wooden bar stool hangs from the wall. It bears t he signature of Andy Irons. It was retired there forever upon Andy’s passing. It makes Ray think of all the great surfers that had passed through the resort’s doors. He presses his lips together in a sort of smile at that.

He keeps Andy’s bar stool up there as a sort of reminder. And a warning. Most of Ray’s Mentawai staff had gathered around the outside circle of the guests by now, their favorite part of the performance coming up. The wild men of the jungle had reached the point of the evening when they served up the squirming, thumb sized witchetty grubs, a staple in their diet, as a challenge for any of the guests to try. Swollen and pus white with tiny, rotating onyx heads, the grubs are daunting. But the bruisers among the guests always come forward and there was always at least one woman who was game. ONYA, HALEY!, came a cry. It never, ever failed to bring house down when a woman went for it. Ray had eaten enough of the things to last a lifetime. They tasted like almonds, not so bad. And now down the hatch they went as the guests squirmed too and as the wild men of the jungle danced in concert with it all. Ray looked around at nothing and everything at once and turned back to his son’s lucky lure. Ray had fallen into this resort business ass backwards after a few economy boat trips out into these islands so many years ago. There was no doubt he fell in love with the place at first wave. As a good surfer, you’d have to have a hole in your head not to. For over twenty years he’d owned his own business as a commercial refrigeration electrician and mechanic. At forty six he’d had enough of missing swells. So he studied up and got his California real estate license and was gonna make a big push for a surfing retirement shilling houses in the South Bay of LA. Every single soul he knew back in Long Beach thought he’d gone insane. But the twist was that at that point he was being paid in waves for surf guiding now and then during the Mentawai peak season. And one day this giant swell barreled through and he heard tell of these guys who were taking a shot at this surf camp thing and that they could use another strong back. The fledgling operation that Ray literally swam into was in financial disarray. The boys there told him that if he had any money, Ray could throw in with them. It just so happened that Ray had just sold his own house in Long Beach, his nest egg to start his real estate business back in the real world. He was cashed up to the gills. One look out at a big set of waves firing down the line across the reef at Rifles was all the time it took.

His Realtor plans were a thing of the past. Capable and used to hard work with his hands, it wasn’t long before Ray had become the face of the entire surf camp operation. The sleeping houses and the big dining hall sprung up like mushrooms. It was to be called the Kandui Resort. Round about this time a surfer named Justis St. John came along for the ride. A former newspaper salesman and at first a freelance videographer for the resort, Justis quickly advanced to the position of operations manager. Justis was as keen a surfer as you could find in Florida for whom the Kandui lefts were a seismic event. Who upon kicking out of his first wave at that particular spot vowed to make the wave his purpose in life. And he had. And he and Ray had never had a spat since.

Now every man needs a wife, so Ray found love in Sumatra and had two boys, Dylan and Jaden. But the island life just wasn’t for her so they split up. Ray found love again with another Sumatran woman who actually understood the whole deal and admiring her and his own formidable luck, he married her. She brought along two of her own nippers from a previous marriage, the enchanting Alin and her precious little sister Naiya. On that marriage altar, on that day, a blended surf family like no other on earth was born. Scanning the room now Ray could see Justis in his own spot over in the corner booth across the great hall. Ray thought about how Justis had dedicated himself to a single wave and a singular life out here on the island. And, like himself, with an Indonesian woman at his side.

Justis and Lina were both on their laptops over there, hard at work on the logistics of the Resort. Or maybe it was the dream villa they were building up the point a bit. At this hour, Ray hoped it was the villa. Ray looked at his scratched up watch. His family, retired after another full day of their island life, would be getting ready for bed in the humble wooden house Ray had built for them out of driftwood and fallen trees. The house was up on top of the point, directly in front of Ray’s beloved Rifles surf spot and as far away from the resort as you could go without jumping in the drink. He had always wanted his family to have their life outside the resort. Still, this life of theirs had made for four, quiet, introspective kids. With guests coming in and out of the revolving door of the resort, Ray’s kids had learned early on that temporary connections with adults didn’t amount to much.

Ray’s son Dylan, practically mute in front of adults, was actually a mischievous Peter Pan that led the village kids and any of the rare visiting youngsters on truly wild adventures. Ripping around on the Jet skis looking for the monsters of the mangroves, fishing expeditions catching beasts damn near as big as their own legs, discovering sea snake lairs and climbing the tallest trees for a good look around. But lately, in the dinghy where Ray and Dylan would wait for the guests to get their fill before Dylan paddled out to set the line-up on fire, father and son conversations had turned to the more early teen mysteries of life and of the surfing destiny that was in his boy’s hands.

The kid was curious and his eyes were bright and Ray figured that could take anyone as far as they wanted to go. It was enough for Ray to be raising all his children in the wild. Children tuned into nature’s frequencies who were physically capable and barefoot and free. This was their home and may the outside world and its greedy demands go to hell for all Ray cared, he was raising kids in sync with the wisdom of the sea and the jungle. Hell yes. Ray had learned a few things after he had once survived a direct lightning strike, and one of them was not the just the value of life, but the meaning of it. The freedom to live however the hell you wanted.

Another roar went up as the first witchetty grub slid down the throat of one of the alpha male guests to be washed down with cold beer and slaps on the back. Ray finished up with the his son’s lure and attached a new stainless leader and laid it out to be found. Ray then got up and strolled over and into the big kitchen. These days Ray strolled everywhere. Even to the boats and the skis and the daydream surf out in front of his family’s house. It was the rhythm of the place, this strolling. He smiled at his kitchen staff and gave them a small laugh and a thumbs up and thanked them for the work of the day in their language. They thumbs upped him back with the smiles that made you want to live in a place like this. He took the back stairs down to his battered scooter and fired it up.

It would be a six minute ride home in the dark back by the mangroves. Along a muddy, rutted jungle path that smelled of what Ray imagined the earth’s damp beginnings would of smelled like. A comforting smell of going home. He had taken this jungle path so many times the scooter could practically make it by itself through the black puddles and the slippery furrows of his family’s countless scooter tracks. With the sound and thoughts of the guests disappearing behind him, Ray took it slow, winding his way out to the point and home. The surf had been been spectacular that day. Again. And Dylan, his oldest at thirteen, had been just as spectacular. About Dylan, Ray remembered thinking at first Was it just me? Some Father’s pride thing? Or was I living with a surfing genius? Because Ray knew good surfing when he saw it. God knows, the absolute best had been going on in his front yard for as long as he cared to remember.

And Ray had since surrendered to the fact that his boy was a prodigy. A natural. Born and allowed in perfect surf whenever he wanted it. Which was always. And that was a hell of a thing. Just one hell of a thing. And a hell of a responsibility too. For the both of them. His boy’s surfing had recently been discovered by the outside world and man, oh man, had it come calling. There was the Rip Curl contract recently signed and that was dizzying. And then Matt Biolos showed up and upon seeing Dylan surf for the first time offered to shape as many boards as Dylan wanted. For life. Biolos’s Mayhem boards had shot Dylan’s surfing into the stratosphere. Then there had been that trip to America that Ray still felt a little guilty about. Dylan had gone on a hard core junket immersed into the whole …LOST world. Griffin, Kolohe, Ian Crane, Pete Matthews, the promo parties, the surfing at Trestles, Dylan’s first wetsuit against his first cold water, the exposure to the world out there with all the evils Ray had left behind in Long Beach a lifetime ago. Then came that night of the phone call. Dylan was in a Waco, Texas hotel room by himself. His own room. Waiting for everyone to show up the next day to surf the artificial wave. A bizarre enough concept for Dylan, let alone being all by himself in his first hotel room. And Ray knew enough about Texas to know that crazy shit goes on there on a daily basis. Hell, crazy was cause for celebration in Texas. But Dylan had managed to get through to the Kandui resort and Ray had stayed on the phone with him most the night, damn the expense. And Damn me, thought Ray, for letting it happen. Got Ray thinking about just what kind of father he was. It had all worked out in the morning, but so what, Ray thought. He knows he should have been there. No one was to blame but himself. Too much, too early. Dammit. Ray ground his teeth a little at the memory as the jouncing single light of his scooter revealed the jungle in a series of snapshots, a dripping jungle perpetually in the business of taking over the world. Of course Ray was grateful for all the things the people of the world out there were doing for his boy and Ray knew anyone’s star attached to Matt Biolos had a career in surfing if they wanted it. But a more robust vigilance from Ray was called for now. Ray knew his son.

And he knew Dylan had boy dreams of becoming a pro surfer man. But the world tour? That can’t be for just anyone. Did his boy have something to prove like the rest of those guys? The heavy chip on the shoulder? The killer inside? That’s what it takes. What a grind. The training and the entourages and the defeats and the victories and the money and the fans and the travel with giant bags of boards and equipment and the hotel rooms and the single mindedness of it and the industry pressures and the pressures of winning and the pressures of losing and the approvals and disapproval’s and the constant judgments. Can a natural surfer fit into that? Andy never did. Ray had seen that in Andy’s eyes. A loneliness. A restless search for something he already had in the first place. And look how that ended up.

And then for Dylan, a handsome child, there would be the girls. Jesus, the girls. There was a mind blower. Dylan had not stepped on that mine yet but it was right around the corner. Ray wondered after the island life Dylan had led, would instincts be enough to get his boy through that no mans land to safety on the other side? It takes ten men to hold a prodigy down, or one silly girl. Ray knew that much. And the thought damn near sent a shiver down Ray’s spine. And another thing, was his boy to be a Titan like Mick Fanning? An assassin like Kelly Slater? A frantic like the Brazilians? Did Ray want his boy to be any of those things?

Distracted, on the moldering leaves of the jungle floor, Ray almost eats it on the last turn. Recovering, he could now see the lights of home through the giant canopy tree that dominated their yard. It’s totally up to him, Ray thought of Dylan. WQS, WCT? It’s up to him. If Dylan wants the whole banana we’ll figure it all out together and if he does then I trust him to be a good man out there. I know he can surf, everybody will, all I want for him is to find the most powerful place in the world for himself. The most joyful. That’s it. It’s that simple and its been that simple since the beginning of time. And if doesn’t work out he always has all this. This natural life, this simple life of love and belonging waiting for him on his island. He’s thirteen and surfing has been his entire life and his entire education. He’s grown up here and all we do is surf. And everybody that comes here, every single person here is focused on surfing. Even the help. It’s the tip of the spear of surfing fantasies. Every waking moment is the ocean and the jungle and surfing. There is nothing like that anywhere else in the galaxy. And no kid like Dylan anywhere in the galaxy. You think the mangroves are deadly? Try a big city. I am definitely not going to push him off the cliff. If he wants it, if he wants that pro surfer life, I am with him all the way and if he doesn’t I’m here. Right here. All men are created equal but does that apply to little boys? Boys are not created equal, that’s what brings their success or their ruin. And that prodigy thing.

That attention. That scrutiny. Those judgments. That Andy thing. Yes, robust vigilance from this point is the answer. And to listen. Just listen to what my boy really wants to do. It’s all up to him.

And there’s no rush. Ray pulls up to the house and parks the scooter in the shed and turns the thing off. After the noise of the resort and the noise of the scooter and the noise in his head, the jungle and ocean sounds descend upon Ray like a melody you would hear from across a lake. Ray takes a moment, listening to the ticking of the cooling engine. Then leaving the key in the bike, he dismounts and stands for a moment facing the house, knowing exactly why he is alive. Ray brushes aside a vague wish that the world would just leave his boy alone and strolls over to the steps of his porch. He climbs them and eases the sliding door open, quiet like. Instead of their upstairs bedrooms, the kids are draped all over the place, sleeping where they fell after their big day. It would be another big day tomorrow. And the day after that. And on and on.

Ray’s wife, Sepni, was smoothly preparing the big bed in the room beyond the couch. Ray could just smell the bleach of the white sheets. Ray opens their small fridge, grabs a soda, steps outside and eases himself onto his seat on the porch. It creaks, familiar under his weight. He gulps a mouthful of the soda, feeling it all the way down. He looks out over the moonlit lineup of Rifles and it looks back. God, the waves I’ve had in my life. He thinks, I’ve had all the perfect waves in the whole damn world. A tangy salt taste is still in the air and though the swell is dying he can see them, his waves, silver gilded and throwing and grinding themselves to a final fizzing halt in the shallows. Ray reaches up and squeezes the top of his nose between his eyes and gives it a good going over. Miracles. These waves. Miracles. Ray drops his hand and leans his head back and thinks about his nickname. All day Ray. Those days are over. At 64 years old he is content. He has made his Shangri-la. He has his lady and he has his Dylan. He has his Jaden, whom Ray often says Dylan better watch out for. Jaden, the cunning fisherman whose surfing is nipping at Dylan’s heels. Ray has his Alin, beautiful Alin, who is already a good enough surfer to shock all the guests. Just today one guest said she was good enough to compete on the world longboard tour. God, not another one, Ray thinks to himself.

And then baby Naiya. Already taking to the sea. With a wise calmness behind her eyes. As if she already realized what she had. Out here where you do not have to push through crowds of people on city streets to get ahead. Pushing and shoving your way through life as it shoves you back, desperately trying to keep you in your place, to sit you down, to foil your struggle to survive until you forget the reasons you live for. No. Not here. Not on this porch. Not on this island. No. This is a natural place. A natural life. A wild life. Wild and natural and free. For me and Sepni and the kids. And the jungle and the reefs and the waves will keep us that way forever, I know they will.

Ray drains the soda and crushes the can in his fist and stands and stretches and pops the cartilage of his bones. His surfer’s bones and his surfer’s muscles beneath his old surfer’s skin. A big long stretch, arms to the night sky and its vast cloak of stars. A rose colored moon was rising on the horizon and its heavenly light would bathe his house, and all in it, throughout the long, restful night. Yes. And so he yawns and turns to go inside the house that he built. To the life his surfing had built and the family that surfing is building.

Stepping over the kids and the surfboards and the toys and the stuffed animals he makes it to his bedroom. There he gets ready for bed and then slips between the cool sheets next to his wife. Half asleep, Sepni moves safe into the crook of his arm and lays her arm across his chest. Smooth, perfect brown skin against his white. And Ray stares at the roof and settles into his pillow and composes his thoughts for sleep. And as he listens to the soft harmonies of his family’s breathing, as he lays there next to his wife, as he lays there with his family, a thought comes to him. He thinks he read it somewhere or maybe he just thought it up. A man is never lost at sea. And this is when Ray Wilcoxen closes his eyelids and descends into a deep, deep slumber, where wild men of the jungle can still dance in concert with it all.

For your next Mentawai adventure please visit: Mentawaiislands.com or Kanduivillas.com