Magic Makes Time

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Magic Makes Time

The 9am El Salvadorian sun beat down like a drum. And here we were trying to move a two-ton mound of dirt with nothing but the most primitive tools.

In my hand was a shovel. The blade of the rusty, cracked spade bit down again and again. Every other scoop it would hit a rock, decelerate to zero, and send a jolt through its handle. I wanted nothing more than to sit in the shade and sip fresh green coconuts. But we had many more hours and days to go and the sun had hours more of rising to do. I kept reaching for a phone that was not there to distract me from the discomfort. In its place, I retreated into a day dream filled with air conditioners, coca cola in frosty bottles and orange creamsicles; dump trucks, caterpillars and back hoes of cold, scratched up metal. And the beach. Which I could get to quicker if only we had better tools. Better technology.

***

A month ago I boarded a plane from California to El Salvador. I was going to surf. But I was also going help build the region's first high school through Surf For Life, a non profit that tucks surf vacations inside of charity work. Most of the rest of the gang came from my sleepy, foggy neighborhood, the Sunset, which is like a little secret beach town inside of San Francisco.

There's Danny Hess, the gentle giant and former Ventura, California lifeguard who ended up pioneering the modern wooden surfboard. His wife Erin Kunkel, a photographer who took the better photos in this story. And Jay Nelson, an artist who is famous for his treehouses and fantasy techno-surf vehicles that evoke buckminster fuller's dynocar and geodesic domes.*

I travelled with a bright blue duffel bag filled with gadgets donated for the school's first computer lab: laptops from Lenovo, cameras from