Follow the Line

After a full day of surfing along the Western Cape with Duncan Savage, one of South Africa’s finest winemakers, we’re talking story in his Cape Town home over a glass of his old-vine red. The bottle’s ink-drawn label features a solitary telephone pole and power line extending into a white void. The back simply says, “Follow the Line, 2021.” There’s a Japanese atmosphere to  the label, suggested by the aesthetic concept of yūgen (幽玄), when hidden meanings and depth lie beneath surface simplicity—like watching wild geese disappear behind clouds, or a ship vanishing behind a distant island. 

I ask Savage about the design, my mind drifting to the long point waves we rode earlier at Elands Bay. “Actually,” he says, “it came from trying to find this old cinsault vineyard in Darling I’d heard about. I kept getting lost down these dirt roads and having to ring the old farmer to ask where it was. After about five calls, he’s getting annoyed and tells me very slowly, ‘Duncan, follow the line.’ The power line, that is, which finally led me to the vineyard.” 

I take a sip and laugh at my tendency to overthink things. Yet as I recall Savage’s surfing that day—the clean lines he drew across the long, groomed walls at Elands—I can’t help but think of the seamless alignment of form in motion. 

For weeks afterward, such images and the words “follow the line” play on a loop in my head. What seems like a hint becomes an imperative— a line that must be followed. I trace it back to a book I encountered a decade or so ago, during my doctoral studies in anthropology. Like Savage’s wine, it carried a cryptic title: Lines: A Brief History. 

It was written by Tim Ingold, widely regarded as the most creative and influential anthropologist of the past 25 years. I remember taking hold of the slim volume and wondering what significance something as ubiquitous as “lines” could hold for the study of humanity. Tremendous significance, it turns out.

Lines, Ingold argues, are fundamental to how humans perceive, interact with, and shape their worlds. From the paths we walk to the stories we tell, lines are inscribed in every aspect of culture and experience. Ingold’s work opened new directions in anthropology and has had a substantial impact across design, architecture, and the arts. 

Suggesting that “life is lived along lines,” he spins a vast web of human practices, from drawing, writing, and navigating to hunting, building, dancing, and much else. The list of activities conjoined by line creation is almost endless, so much so that Ingold wrote a second book on the subject. 

Despite being ripe for the study of lines, surfing goes unmentioned. Bringing surfers, who have been speaking the language of lines for some time, into the dialogue, the task is not so much to study the lines themselves but to follow them, join their movements, and trace how they stitch surfing together. Such an inquiry spans coastlines and board design, lines followed and created in the act of riding waves, and the narratives that bind the surf community. 

Life Is Lived Along Lines 

“To study both people and things is to study the lines they are made of,” writes Ingold. Lines, in his estimation, are not static, abstract forms, but fluid paths that emerge through movement and growth. His ecological framework encompasses a diverse array of lines, each with distinct characteristics and implications. Ingold distinguishes between “threads,” flexible lines that can be knotted (e.g., a rope), and “traces,” marks left on surfaces (e.g., a trail in the sand). 

The taxonomy of lines includes cuts, cracks, and creases—lines resulting from physical interactions between materials. It also encompasses active, dynamic lines that move freely without defined beginnings or ends (e.g., a dancer’s movements, the path of a bird in flight, growth lines of plants, improvised melodies). Moreover, Ingold explores imaginary and conceptual lines, such as longitude and latitude, time, narrative, and social relationships. Life itself is a kind of line—a path of movement and transformation. 

Against the geometricians, the anthropologist insists that lines are not mere connectors of dots or points. According to Ingold, the world is neither a globe nor a network, but a living “meshwork,” an intricate weave of tangled lines. The overlapping nature of meshworks challenges the longstanding dualisms of Western thought (nature/culture, subject/object, mind/body) that fragment and compartmentalize the world. 

Ingold calls instead for an ecology of life where lines cross, boundaries blur, and there’s no such thing as “empty space.” This entangled perspective invites us to reconsider our relationships to—or, rather, our inseparability from and relations with—environments and others.

Wayfaring Through the Coastline 

Before the sun has risen, I’m following familiar lines to the coast. (The “I” in this case is you, or any of us.) Roads, like trails and paths, are “lines of passage.” In contrast to static boundary lines, like walls and fences, roads facilitate movement and connection. 

The road winds through the landscape, and the ocean emerges on the horizon. The coastline might seem like one of surfing’s more obvious lines. However, the boundary between land and sea is not delineated by a single line. A closer look reveals that all lines—from borders on maps to cellular membranes—are porous and permeable. 

The coast is a meshwork of intersecting lines: flowing currents, swells and tides, wind patterns and surface textures, migrating sea- birds and branching kelp forests, schools of fish, echolocating dolphins, sharks on the scent of seals, sculpted cliffs, dunes, the footprints of people and plovers. Rather than being a bounded place or even an environment (literally, “that which surrounds”), the coastline is a “zone of entanglement” where pathways—often extending thousands of miles—converge. The shore, too, is not a finished product but a process—a “line of becoming,” continually reshaped by erosion and deposition. More than a place, the coastline is a happening, just as a human is more verb than noun. 

Surfers, like sailors, fishermen, and other coastal inhabitants, develop an intimate understanding of the patterns that connect the coastal meshwork. As Ingold writes, “The inhabitant is rather one who participates from within in the very process of the world’s continual coming into being, and who, in laying a trail of life, contributes to its weave and texture.” 

Each wave is a unique variation, offering different possible lines. In the absence of any fixed boundaries, the line of a wave is a path of movement that is followed and created simultaneously.

He describes this way of knowing as “wayfaring,” a process of gathering knowledge and acquiring skills through movement, immersion, and lived experience as opposed to formal education. Surfers, of course, study maps and swell charts, but, as any of us knows, the map is not the territory. The ocean is not a wave pool. The world is not a database. 

Once I reach the coast, I see the beachbreak is misaligned. The swell is too west, and an unforeseen sideshore is ruffling the lineup. I drive north, imagining a few spots that could be working in these conditions. But what about the dropping tide? Perhaps I should head south, or take a walk and wait for it to fill in. 

Our common predicament further illustrates surfing as wayfaring. Whereas transportation is destination-oriented, implying relocation from point A to point B, wayfaring is a continuous journey. The wayfarer is always somewhere, on the way, pausing here and there before moving on, intermezzo. As Ingold writes, “The inhabited world is a reticulate meshwork of such trails, which is continually being woven as life goes on along them.” 

For surfers, knowledge of coastal dynamics is not a theoretical resource but an embodied process of what Ingold calls “becoming knowledgeable.” Over years, decades, even entire lifetimes, surfers become masters in the arts of noticing. There is no specific goal or endpoint to becoming knowledgeable, however—only a deepening form of alignment that evolves into the alignment of form. 

Alignment is not the product of the surfer’s will to put things in order—oceanic forces are much too powerful for that—but a harmonious positioning in relation to myriad lines. Such alignment is not only physical but also involves one’s thoughts, emotions, and relationships with the broader patterns of life. Surfers know who is aligned and who is not just by the way they carry their board and look at the ocean. 

Having driven north, I trace the path of the swell from a cliff overlooking four coves. The ocean is a living canvas of lines, visible and invisible. What is checking the surf if not reading lines? The horizon, more than a line separating ocean and sky, establishes scale, depth, and perspective. The westerly swell, having transformed from its chaotic genesis into long, orderly lines, sweeps through the coves. The cliffs block the wind, though the ripples farther out suggest it’s picking up. The arts of noticing are like being able to read and interpret music notation. For the unacquainted, order is sensed, but language is lacking. The ocean’s song can be danced only by those who have learned to follow its lines and move in time. 

From the cliff, I continue studying the coves. Even before I physically enter the lineup, I have extended myself into it. As in art, specifically painting, vision here is a double movement: My eyes both extend my body through the act of looking and open my body to the world through this extension. I see and am seen. Like the interspace bridging land and sea, self and other, my body and the environment are a continuum, aspects of a common flesh. 

Discussing the way a painter lends their body to the world to transform the visible, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes, “I do not see space according to its exterior envelope; I live in it from the inside; I am immersed in it. After all, the world is all around me, not in front of me.” 

The surfer, like the painter, is not a passive observer but an active participant. Having al- ready mindsurfed dozens of waves, I am in this sense already out there. The session has begun before I have even touched the water. 

Footprints Through the Weather World 

Following a path down the cliff, on the beach I encounter footprints tracking in different directions. As Ingold observes, footprints are traces—marks left by the movement of people and animals across a surface. As lines that inscribe the passage of time and movement, footprints offer information about who has been there and where they’ve gone. Several sets lead down the beach, branching off and fading into the water- line of the third cove. My eyes track them to a small pack of surfers clustered around a peak. I move on, following a single set of footprints alongside those of a dog. 

Reaching the fourth cove, I am greeted by the dog and plot my paddle out. Punching through the shorebreak, I glimpse an approaching set, a stack of lines that grows taller than the horizon as it nears. Veering right, I just slip beneath feathering green lines. Now beyond the break line, I pivot left and paddle to the peak, where I meet the lone wave-rider. We recognize one another. Our paths have crossed before. 

Sitting atop our boards on the fluid surface line where sky and ocean meet, we exist in what Ingold calls the “weather world.” Our lower bodies, submerged in the cold, undulating ocean, sense the subtle shifts of currents and the energy of approaching waves. Above water, our upper bodies are not so much in the air as enveloped by the atmosphere, our faces registering the briny zephyr and the warmth of sunlight filtering through scattered clouds. Spitting saltwater and drawing ocean air into our lungs, we are marine mammals, conduits between the aquatic and aerial spheres. Hence, surfing does not take place “on” or “in” the ocean, but in the totality of the weather world, an intricate meshwork of lines—pulsing swells beneath, wind currents above, and the invisible trajectories of weather patterns all around. 

Following and Creating Lines 

A set arrives and my companion catches the second wave. I watch as he drives off the bottom, the lip a white brushstroke trailing just behind him. His board creates a trace through the water column as he sets his rail mid-face and flies down the line. Taken literally, this expression seems paradoxical because it implies that a wave has “a line.” But unlike a road or sidewalk, a wave is a fluid, ever-changing form. And while generally similar, each wave is a unique variation, offering different possible lines. In the absence of any fixed boundaries, the line of a wave is a path of movement that is followed and created simultaneously. 

The painter Paul Klee spoke of a line that develops freely, in its own time, as a line that “goes for a walk.” Applied to surfing, we might say such a line “goes for a ride.” But if it’s the line that goes walking or riding, what of its drawer? Is the jazz pianist following a melodic line or creating one? Such examples illustrate Ingold’s notion that lines are not always predetermined paths, but rather emerge through a dynamic interplay between an actor’s intent and the medium’s inherent properties. Whether an artwork, a wave ridden, or a song improvised, lines are co-created. 

The surfer’s movements leave traces in the three-dimensional space of the wave: Vortices spiral off his fins, pressure changes through the water, subtle temperature mixings appear where body displaces sea. A series of turns and cutbacks sends vibrations through the water. Traces ripple outward. The water is interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave only a fleeting trace, as water is charged with pressure and always seeks its equilibrium. A final snap launches a shower into the air—a last trace of his line of passage across the wave. The spray falls back to the surface, which is perfectly smooth a moment later. Like the final note of a song, the ride simply disappears, reverberating lines woven back into the meshwork. 

A surfboard is, of course, a study in lines guided by variations on the alignment of form. From gliders to thrusters, each shape and fin configuration allows different lines to be drawn on a wave face. Single-fins for long, sweeping arcs, tri-fins enabling tighter, more vertical trajectories, no fins allowing free-form slides and lateral rail carves. 

In the case of bodysurfing, the body itself becomes a surfboard. Whether standing up or lying down, the surfer’s body becomes a responsive line, harmonizing with the wave’s form through subtle shifts and postural alignments. The ne plus ultra of surfing is when the sum of lines merge into a single form in motion. 

The Narrative Lines That Bind 

The wind picks up, and we call it a day. Back on the cliff, we talk story with a couple surfers who were out at the third cove. Beyond words, we narrate with our hands, our fingers tracing lines across the weather world. 

Like surfing itself, storytelling is not about connecting points in a network, but weaving threads in a meshwork. To tell a story is to retrace a path through the world that others can follow in the process of spinning their own threads. As in knitting, writes Ingold, “the thread being spun now and the thread picked up from the past are both of the same yarn. There is no point at which the story ends and life begins.” In this way, narratives are not told about life, but are the very pathways through which life goes on. 

A surfing life unfolds as a continuous line of movement. Tracing our surfing lineage to oceanic peoples of the world places us in a long line of ritual wave riding with no beginning or end. Rituals, like narratives, are ties that bind communities. When you ride a wave, the line doesn’t end when the wave finishes. Rather, it lingers and becomes tangled with the lines of waves past and yet to come, and with those of fellow wayfarers departed and unarrived. As I sensed that day in South Africa, following the line—whether on a wave or through life—is a movement of opening and finding a way through the myriad currents that form, persist, and change.