Just like life.By Molly Young

Some families play board games and do crafts.

Our house was littered with bars of surf wax.

As a small child, I once mistook one for vanilla taffy and took a bite out of it.

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In response, my mother got me a hand-me-down wet suit and borrowed a board.

I paddled out the next week, my arms as thin as capellini noodles in the water.

By 16, I was at the beach every day.

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I’d traded my small wet suit for a teen-sized one, my borrowed toothpick for a 7-foot board.

Surfing had changed my body, too.

My soft, round tummy had hollowed and developed the tensile strength of Kevlar.

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The sun bleached my hair and dusted my skin with gold.

Surfing, in a word, was safety.

It is one of the few hobbies that feel proximate to actual peril, even death.

Sharks were a daily possibility.

Just to be safe.)

But until I surfed, I never understood that fear could be pleasurable.

Maybe not the fear itself but the willful conquering of it.

Surfing still scares me every time I do it, even 15 years later.

Like any good mental trick, it quells the panic.

Because that’s the thing about adult life.

It’s filled with thingspossibly even defined by thingsthat are initially frightening but ultimately invigorating.

Job interviews, first dates, big moves.

Things you’re able to neither predict nor perfect.

Things for which surfing makes good practice.

I was never sure what those people were doing.

But I was curious, because they seemed like a tribe, and I assumed all tribes were closed.

I was taking these walks during a transitional time in my life.

I’d recently sworn off drinking and Austin’s dive-bar scene to discover what went on in the daylight.

But so far I was just lonely, having given up one world without locating the next.

before you fall).

Then I stepped up to the wall of stone.

It was a funny moment, my first confrontation with the rock.

Climbing for me was not just shaking hands with fear but pressing my whole body against it.

My muscles felt depleted as I reached for the top.

After the confines of city life, I just couldn’t resist the space.

The creek and waterfall in the 2-acre yard clinched the deal.

I was seeking quiet and beauty, and I got both.

There wasn’t much to do, I soon realized, especially in winter.

I couldn’t walk to a coffee shop or see a movie without a significant drive.

I turned inwardtoo inward.

So I began to think about activities to take me out of my head.

I often drove past an archery store in town.

I liked the idea of having a target, honing a craft.

One day, I stopped in and requested a lesson.

A lean, weatherworn guy in his 50s took me to a long room in back of the store.

He showed me how to draw the bowstring and where to keep my sights.

Within a few tries, I was shooting in the vicinity of the target.

I left with my own recurve bowalmost as big as Katniss Everdeen’sand quiver of arrows.

Back home, I hung a target on a tree and strung my first arrow.

I drew the bowstring back and focused on the bull’s-eye.

The pull felt easy at first, but soon my arm began to strain and shake.

Even through my leather glove, I could feel the string cutting into my fingertips.

you’re able to’t overthink it.

You simply have to draw and shoot.

I began to shoot quickly.

My aim improved as arrows vanished into the snowy yard.

By spring, I was anxious to get outside again.

I found an arrow in my yard.

Then I spotted anotheras if I were on an impromptu Easter egg hunt.

I grabbed my bow, quickly strung a new one and let go.

Photo Credit: @corey_wilson.