Literature News

New book by Lesley Choyce explores surfing Nova Scotia

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 16 January, 2007 : - - Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia, Canada - Lesley Choyce’s latest book, Driving Minnie’s Piano: Memoirs of a Surfing Life in Nova Scotia chronicles a lifetime of surfing the north atlantic, from New Jersey to Nova Scotia.

The book reads like bits of song where the line between past and present blurs to compel the reader on a wonderful journey of coastal discovery. A piano and surfboard form a connection that weaves the moments that move our lives through passion and fate. Such as an atheletic piano playing grandmother (Minnie) who advises Choyce that Nova Scotia sounds wonderful … all that coastline.

Choyce’s draws from his lifetime of surfing in the depths of winter to provide the reader, with the sense of awe found in the waves that hit our shoreline everyday. "Cold is only a state of mind," says Choyce, 55.

From Driving Minnie’s Piano:
"I’m travelling east now with serious intent, gaining speed, almost parallel to the wave whose back I am riding. Behind me the wave has begun to pitch forward. The crack of breaking ice mixes with the slurp of sea dragging up the softer stuff, a sound that might seem ominous if I didn’t have speed as an ally.
 
But I’m free and feeling fine and temporarily indomitable as I slip through the vertical icefield, a wall of water filled with heirlooms, knick-knacks and memorabilia of the season gone by. Behind me the wave has grown hollow and the sun has allowed it to show its true colours of blue mixed with green commingled with those blazing diamonds. I’m a little too dazzled by it all and lose my focus, allowing my board to slow just a hair. I tip up on one foot and tilt back towards the maw of the wave but recover my balance quickly and shift my weight forward to increase speed.
 
All my early morning confidence is suddenly shaken as I realize the wave is spitting ice cubes from the lip now. All a body can do is tuck in low, keep one’s head down and watch the wall get steeper and steeper up ahead. I decide to trust instinct over reason and stay tucked, assess the locomotive cave of sea and ice that is consuming me and hope for the best.
 
The best would be a quick trip back to sunlight but instead the sea decides to have its way with me. My feet are still dutifully planted on my board as the lip of the wave, dense with the memory of a brutal winter, takes a broadside punch at my wetsuit-hooded head. I feel myself cartwheeling forward into the drink and suddenly am reminded what freezing seawater does to the fully exposed human face.

First, I feel the small razors of wafer ice slicing at me as I connect with the surface. Then I slip under and hear the magnificent stereo whump of a wave in triumph over a mortal surfer. I’m held under for mere seconds that expand exponentially in a world where time is truly mutable. Then I surface, gasping for good air and feeling the very identifiable pain of a short but volcanic headache brought on by a Canadian wipeout.
 
When the wave is through with me, I scramble back onto my board, paddle for the safety of deeper water and take deep clean gulps of air until I can focus again. Another formation of geese takes possession of the sky above and the young seal pops up again nearby to blink at me in innocent wonder."

Driving Minnie’s Piano, Memoirs of a Surfing Life in Nova Scotia is published by Pottersfield Press. ISBN 1-895900-85-9. Trade paperback. 224 pages. Distributed by Nimbus Publishing.

Lesley Choyce is the author of 65 books and winner of The Dartmouth Book Award and the Ann Connor Brimer Award as well as being shortlisted for many other awards. He has been surfing for more than 40 years.

Click here to read more about the author.

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Mary Ann Archibald

Literature - Surfersvillage