The Quiver Question

A half-century ago, surfers generally owned and rode just one surfboard over a given period—a practice that seems quaint now. Today, neophytes absorb the concept of the quiver almost as soon as the salt water dries in their hair. If we’re going to ride waves well, the thinking goes, we’ll require a range of surf craft, the same way a skier matches skis to snow or a fly fisherman meets conditions with a fly purposefully selected from an array of similar items. The ocean changes, we change, and since the late 1960s, the solution to this uncertainty has been to own as many surfboards as possible. To most surfers, this makes sense.

But what we do next is as curious as it is enduring. At some point, that carefully assembled quiver is lined up along a fence line, or spread into a half-moon fan, or piled to suggest easy abundance, or stuck in the sand, tombstone-like. And then the owner of these