A California winter

There’s a sort of excited, childlike buzz in the air that surrounds swell season in Santa Barbara.

I planted myself here for three months — nesting in tiny home and waiting for winter swells — before hitting the road again.

This period of time will mark the longest I’ve been home since “I decided to get my travel wiggles out” in 2021. It felt good to sit in one place for some time and slow down a bit; to see familiar faces, be in a routine of sorts, do holiday things. I sometimes feel like it takes leaving/returning home to remind me how special it is and to really appreciate my time here.

Some of my most precious days have been spent in my very own backyard. Waking up to the sound of waves crashing louder and louder in the middle of the night as a swell fills in, and again, a couple hours later, to the sound of people speedily waxing their boards while the sun rises through my windows. “Refrigerated sunlight” mornings spent bundled up with a cup of coffee at my favorite bench just outside my gate, watching as the bluff fills with familiar faces (some of which I haven’t seen since last winter) checking the surf. During swell season, my coffee/bench time feels more like an office hour than it does a meditation; I listen as people talk about the swell, the wind, the tide, where will be best, but when all is said and done I usually decide to surf here because there’s something so ineffably luxurious about surfing where you live. Surfing all morning—until my arms hurt or my rumbling stomach becomes dramatically unbearable or I reluctantly lose circulation in my hands/feet and have to call it quits—then feasting in the sun with my full suit still on (so that I can surf again as soon as I’m satiated) on whatever smorgasbord I have in my pantry that day.