Chris Burkard: The joy of surfing in ice-cold water

449,348 views ・ 2015-05-22

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00:13
So if I told you that this was the face of pure joy,
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would you call me crazy?
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I wouldn't blame you,
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because every time I look at this Arctic selfie, I shiver just a little bit.
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I want to tell you a little bit about this photograph.
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I was swimming around in the Lofoten Islands in Norway,
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just inside the Arctic Circle,
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and the water was hovering right at freezing.
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The air? A brisk -10 with windchill,
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and I could literally feel the blood trying to leave my hands,
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feet and face, and rush to protect my vital organs.
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It was the coldest I've ever been.
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But even with swollen lips, sunken eyes, and cheeks flushed red,
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I have found that this place right here is somewhere I can find great joy.
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Now, when it comes to pain, psychologist Brock Bastian
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probably said it best when he wrote,
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"Pain is a kind of shortcut to mindfulness.
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It makes us suddenly aware of everything in the environment.
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It brutally draws us in
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to a virtual sensory awareness of the world much like meditation."
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If shivering is a form of meditation, then I would consider myself a monk.
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(Laughter)
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Now, before we get into the why
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would anyone ever want to surf in freezing cold water?
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I would love to give you a little perspective
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on what a day in my life can look like.
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(Music)
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(Video) Man: I mean, I know we were hoping for good waves,
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but I don't think anybody thought that was going to happen.
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I can't stop shaking.
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I am so cold.
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(Music)
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(Applause)
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Chris Burkard: So, surf photographer, right?
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I don't even know if it's a real job title, to be honest.
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My parents definitely didn't think so
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when I told them at 19 I was quitting my job to pursue this dream career:
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blue skies, warm tropical beaches, and a tan that lasts all year long.
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I mean, to me, this was it. Life could not get any better.
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Sweating it out, shooting surfers in these exotic tourist destinations.
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But there was just this one problem.
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You see, the more time I spent traveling to these exotic locations,
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the less gratifying it seemed to be.
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I set out seeking adventure, and what I was finding was only routine.
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It was things like wi-fi, TV, fine dining, and a constant cellular connection
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that to me were all the trappings of places heavily touristed
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in and out of the water,
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and it didn't take long for me to start feeling suffocated.
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I began craving wild, open spaces,
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and so I set out to find the places others had written off
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as too cold, too remote, and too dangerous to surf,
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and that challenge intrigued me.
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I began this sort of personal crusade against the mundane,
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because if there's one thing I've realized,
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it's that any career,
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even one as seemingly glamorous as surf photography,
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has the danger of becoming monotonous.
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So in my search to break up this monotony, I realized something:
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There's only about a third of the Earth's oceans that are warm,
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and it's really just that thin band around the equator.
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So if I was going to find perfect waves,
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it was probably going to happen somewhere cold,
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where the seas are notoriously rough,
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and that's exactly where I began to look.
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And it was my first trip to Iceland
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that I felt like I found exactly what I was looking for.
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I was blown away by the natural beauty of the landscape,
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but most importantly, I couldn't believe we were finding perfect waves
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in such a remote and rugged part of the world.
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At one point, we got to the beach
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only to find massive chunks of ice had piled on the shoreline.
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They created this barrier between us and the surf,
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and we had to weave through this thing like a maze
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just to get out into the lineup.
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and once we got there,
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we were pushing aside these ice chunks trying to get into waves.
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It was an incredible experience, one I'll never forget,
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because amidst those harsh conditions,
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I felt like I stumbled onto one of the last quiet places,
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somewhere that I found a clarity and a connection with the world
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I knew I would never find on a crowded beach.
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I was hooked. I was hooked. (Laughter)
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Cold water was constantly on my mind,
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and from that point on,
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my career focused on these types of harsh and unforgiving environments,
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and it took me to places like Russia, Norway, Alaska, Iceland, Chile,
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the Faroe Islands, and a lot of places in between.
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And one of my favorite things about these places
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was simply the challenge and the creativity it took just to get there:
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hours, days, weeks spent on Google Earth
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trying to pinpoint any remote stretch of beach or reef we could actually get to.
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And once we got there, the vehicles were just as creative:
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snowmobiles, six-wheel Soviet troop carriers,
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and a couple of super-sketchy helicopter flights.
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(Laughter)
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Helicopters really scare me, by the way.
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There was this one particularly bumpy boat ride
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up the coast of Vancouver Island to this kind of remote surf spot,
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where we ended up watching helplessly from the water
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as bears ravaged our camp site.
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They walked off with our food and bits of our tent,
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clearly letting us know that we were at the bottom of the food chain
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and that this was their spot, not ours.
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But to me, that trip
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was a testament to the wildness I traded for those touristy beaches.
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Now, it wasn't until I traveled to Norway -- (Laughter) --
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that I really learned to appreciate the cold.
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So this is the place
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where some of the largest, the most violent storms in the world
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send huge waves smashing into the coastline.
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We were in this tiny, remote fjord, just inside the Arctic Circle.
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It had a greater population of sheep than people,
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so help if we needed it was nowhere to be found.
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I was in the water taking pictures of surfers,
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and it started to snow.
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And then the temperature began to drop.
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And I told myself, there's not a chance you're getting out of the water.
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You traveled all this way, and this is exactly what you've been waiting for:
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freezing cold conditions with perfect waves.
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And although I couldn't even feel my finger to push the trigger,
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I knew I wasn't getting out.
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So I just did whatever I could. I shook it off, whatever.
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But that was the point that I felt
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this wind gush through the valley and hit me,
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and what started as this light snowfall quickly became a full-on blizzard,
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and I started to lose perception of where I was.
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I didn't know if I was drifting out to sea or towards shore,
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and all I could really make out was the faint sound of seagulls
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and crashing waves.
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Now, I knew this place had a reputation for sinking ships and grounding planes,
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and while I was out there floating, I started to get a little bit nervous.
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Actually, I was totally freaking out --
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(Laughter) -- and I was borderline hypothermic,
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and my friends eventually had to help me out of the water.
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And I don't know if it was delirium setting in or what,
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but they told me later
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I had a smile on my face the entire time.
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Now, it was this trip
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and probably that exact experience where I really began to feel
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like every photograph was precious,
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because all of a sudden in that moment, it was something I was forced to earn.
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And I realized, all this shivering had actually taught me something:
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In life, there are no shortcuts to joy.
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Anything that is worth pursuing is going to require us to suffer
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just a little bit,
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and that tiny bit of suffering that I did for my photography,
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it added a value to my work that was so much more meaningful to me
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than just trying to fill the pages of magazines.
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See, I gave a piece of myself in these places,
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and what I walked away with
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was a sense of fulfillment I had always been searching for.
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So I look back at this photograph.
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It's easy to see frozen fingers and cold wetsuits
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and even the struggle that it took just to get there,
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but most of all, what I see is just joy.
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Thank you so much.
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(Applause)
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