A little bit after I took the shot above, a wave crested over the horizon. Not a set, just one single wave. It had the size larger than anything I've seen in the water before. I was sitting in the wrong spot, inside of a rip that was holding me in the same place. The wave began to break and I thought I had a chance to swim as fast as I could to catch up to it and dive under.

I remember the crystalline blue sheen of the face of the wave as it soared tall in front of me. Suddenly all of the slow-motion thoughts sped up as the wave crashed down and I realized I was going to die. No other thought of how I was going to tell anyone goodbye. I'm dead.

I dove down deeper than I ever have before. I hit the bottom and then felt the whitewater tear my arms and legs, full-on ragdoll. I tossed. I found my balance and started swimming upward for what felt like forever. Three times the usual length of time it takes for me to come up from a larger wave. When I hit the surface, my only thought was "get outside". There was no other waves going out. It was calm. But the ocean humbled me like never before.

I have no photo of that wave, nor did any bit of me think to raise my camera to get a shot of it as it was breaking. But that light blue color of death is stained in my head.

I sat really far out to calm myself and catch my breath, then had some care-free shooting on the inside in a safer spot because I knew nothing would be as scary as that.