Eitan? Well not quite yet, though he has aspirations …..

Remember how much fun it was to fly a kite as a kid? The thrill of running the kite to a great height overhead? The fun of flying the kite up and down and around the sky? The tug of the wind in your hands? Now remember water skiing, maybe wake boarding. The rush of running on water, leaping over waves, crashing and getting picked up by the boat rope and doing it again and again? Welcome to kite boarding – it’s about kite, board and man/woman hooked together in a riotous assembly of wind, water, power and flight.

Yesterday, Irena, Eitan and I left Conversations at anchor in Black River anchorage and made our way by bus and thumb to the kite boarding beach at Le Morne, on the southern tip of Mauritius. It was Contest Day! We stood on the main beach, open mouthed at the site of a hundred wind surfers and kite boarders zooming, leaping, crashing (well, not into one another, amazingly enough). The tradewinds howled around the headland at 25 knots, kicking up a small surf inside the reef, and out at the reef, half a mile from shore, we could see great curlers crashing on the coral, and specs of kite boarders and windsurfers dodging death. Colourful and impressive we thought. Then, “enough of this”, we said, “let’s head for our lessons”!

We left the main beach and headed for the equivalent of the 'kiddy pool around the corner. We checked in with John, our Mauritian instructor, got trussed up in wetsuit, harness, helmet, kite, board and radio and the three of us waded out into waste deep water. Guess what? It’s even harder than it looks.

Yesterday was our first lesson in Mauritius, but third lesson overall. To this point, Eitan and I have had about 5 hours of instruction and practice. We have learned how to rig the kite, launch it and sort of control it. We can body drag downind, pulled by the kite (very fun) and even body drag our way up wind with kite power to recover a lost board. And, we can fly the kite with one hand, put the board on our feet with the other, and launch! Well sort of. My launches are still a dance of stand up and fall down. Eitan, is progressing more quickly (dammed youth!) standing up for a few seconds then falling down.

But by gawd, we will both be kite boarders before we die trying.

Reflections

I find kite boarding intoxicating, but as an initiate, intimidating. There is huge power in the wind, which is both its attraction and threat. And the water too, is not land, as much as I love it. Hooked to the kite, I feel committed (which is hard for me!) and I feel a little daunted.

But I want it. I really, really want it. I want to be able to zip along the surface and leap 50 feet in air as I see kite boarders doing all around me But first I must climb the wall, the wall we all encounter when we set out to do something we do not now know how to do - Learning. Learning is a bitch. Learning is confounding. It’s hard work. It’s humiliating. It’s fraught with failure, festooned with fun, filled with firsts, finally finished, and then begins again. It is a cycle.

As children we do learning as play. As adults we make it work. Why? I think as children and youths we are essentially fearless, invulnerable in ourlack of experience and less developed capability for self-consciousness. As adults, we learn our limits. With declining strength, we hesitate. Over the years, we experience the world’s push back, we get hurt, and we become more cautious. We develop a history; we tell ourselves a story about our limits. No doubt about it, as we age, we are less inclined to learn because we are more afraid, increasingly of things with a physical learning component.

My father once said to me “you have to be tough to be old”. I agree. I would say we have to be courageous to age gracefully, happily, to keep learning despite our predilection to the contrary. If learning is the essence of life, then he is right, we do have to be tough to get old, because it is harder to learn as we age. I am 56 and I cannot keep up with young Eitan’s learning on the kite board. He is learning faster than I am and it pisses me off. So I have a choice to make. I can be discouraged, or I can be determined. Kite boarding is a first hand reminder for me: the essence of courage is reaching for what I want despite my fear of failure, my fear in this case I will never get up, and stay up, on the board. It’s about COURAGE.

What could be more fun than that!?