HEAVEN ….
LIES IN northwest Peru, 600 kilometers up the Carreterra Panamericana Norte from Lima.
Dulcie Davies knew it when she saw it.
She stood on a windswept beach. Sand dunes piled to the sky on her left, the Pacific Ocean rising and falling in soft incoming swells as far as she could see.
The horizon was cloudy, adding a background to a painting too perfect to be confined to a frame. She was far from Stanford University and even farther from her London home – distances that seemed more acute as she stood in silence in awe.
Davies was a witness to Chicama, a legendary surf break once so remote that it remained secret to outsiders until 1965 when Hawaiian surfer Chuck Shipman saw it from the window of an airplane.
So far removed from her life at Stanford and a goalie on the Cardinal field hockey team, Davies walked along the empty beach with her friend and Peruvian guide, Edwin. They stepped around the point and the sets came into focus.
Davies had never seen anything like it. Known as the longest left-footed point break in the world, the waves were ideal for her goofyfoot style – a surfboard stance of leading with the right foot instead of the left. If she wanted to and had the stamina, Dulcie could ride a single wave for a half-mile … at least.
An empty beach. All the waves they could ride. As long as they wanted to ride them.
"The best day of my life," she said.
* * *
THERE HAVE BEEN a lot of great days, particularly in a Stanford field hockey uniform. The senior science, technology, and society major was a first-team All-American in 2014, the 2015 America East Conference Goalkeeper of the Year, and has started every game of her collegiate career. She has helped Stanford to a combined 64-20 record – the second-best winning percentage (.762) of any senior class in school history.
Going into the America East tournament semifinal in Albany, New York, on Saturday, Davies has a career goals-against average of 1.09 and is seeking to lead the Cardinal into the NCAA tournament for the seventh time in nine years.
Her style is unmistakable. Field hockey goalies wear a suppressive amount of protective gear, but Davies plays with athleticism that seems unexpected from that position, especially considering the burden of her bulky padding. However, throughout the season, and indeed her career, Davies' ability to cover ground, move quickly and be acrobatic when necessary, has saved the Cardinal.
Davies views herself as a source of potential energy, like a coiled spring.
"It's being able to be clear-headed and with this sense of stillness, a heightened awareness," she said. "It's having the potential to spring. Quick reflexes. To be almost animal-like to spring out and get the ball and take people by surprise.
"That's like how I want to be as a goalkeeper. Putting on the pads transforms me to a panther-like animal, to be able to throw myself from one side of the goal to the other. "
Andrew Zayac, a U.S. national men's team goalie and Stanford volunteer assistant coach, has been vital in that training and mindset. Davies sees how Zayac uses his legs to explode to the ball. That's how she wants to play.
Head coach Tara Danielson sees something else, a sense of calm in pressure situations and total focus in training and games. Calm and focus, two qualities that seem somehow aligned. They came to the fore in a September game at No. 15 Iowa when Davies made a stunning reaction dive to her left to save a penalty stroke -- an unobstructed set piece from seven yards out (seven yards!) -- to help preserve a 3-2 victory.
"In big games, I thrive off the energy," Davies said. "I feel like I absorb the energy of others. It's a good stimulant, that's what gets me pumped up. When the energy is low, I'm a bit more lethargic and slow. I'm really sensitive to the vibe."
As for her vibe? "Sarcastic and witty," is how teammate Jessica Chisholm describes it.
It's also this: adventurous and bold.
Photo by Hector Garcia-Molina.
* * *
JAMES DAVIES is 17 months older than his sister. He was the kind of kid who could pick up a sport – tennis, soccer, swimming, horseback riding -- and immediately excel at it. A perfect role model for Dulcie.
Once, at a skateboard park, James ducked into a halfpipe. Thus inspired, even though she had never done it before, Dulcie followed ... and broke her wrist.
"I remember my brother being really fearless," she said. "He could do anything, like climb trees, and jumping off things and doing somersaults, and never get hurt."
Dulcie adored her brother and followed his lead.
"She had to be good. Otherwise, she would have had no value for him," wrote Dulcie's mum, Vicky Maxwell Davies, in an e-mail. "I remember her still going to play soccer at the local kids' club. She was about the only girl and, at 6, was the smallest of all of them, but was fearless on the pitch. The kids all got an English kit, and hers was enormous. She looked really funny, but she didn't care.
Said Dulcie, "I used to just play and not really care about hurting myself. I would just go for it. I'm a bit more reserved now."
The idea of whatever her brother could do, she could do better, launched Dulcie's interest in surfing. Until she was 13, the family spent every weekend between Easter and November at the family bungalow on England's south coast.
Some of Dulcie's warmest memories are of the weekends in Wittering (they also spent many surfing weekends in Cornwall). Her father, Giles, would do damage control to keep the small structure in one piece. The interior was always damp when they arrived, and there was that smell. But a warm fire and maybe a little hammering would get the weekend off right.
Cousins would meet them and, with low tides revealing acres of open sand, the vast beach was perfect for sand castles – massive ones. They would stand on top, like medieval sentries, and wait for the tide to rush back in, reclaim the sand and sink it back into the ocean.
Giles used to place Dulcie on the front of his longboard and catch some gentle waves. Dulcie was frightened at first, but when her brother started surfing, she taught herself how to surf as well in her never-ending quest "to be as cool as him."
They tried all kinds of water activities, like sailing. They found a large hunk of Styrofoam, equipped it with an anchor and dragged it into the water to create their own diving platform. The village was so safe that the kids were given their first tastes of independence, bicycling unsupervised to buy sweets at the candy shop with their hard-earned pocket money.
The 90-minute drives back to London on Sunday evenings were broken up by a stop for dinner at a favorite pub in Haslemere. An exhausted Dulcie sometimes would curl under the table and fall asleep before being lifted back into the car for the rest of the drive home.
* * *
AT ALLEYN'S SCHOOL (est. 1619) in London, Dulcie developed confidence through her participation in the Combined Cadet Force – essentially an arm of the British Army for young people. The military setting pushed her sense of responsibility and leadership in a disciplined environment. By the time she was 17, Dulcie was commanding a platoon and earning a medal for marksmanship
"Dulcie learned that the sky was the limit," Vicky wrote. "She could give anything a go, and if she worked hard enough, probably could make a success of it."
Surfing was now entrenched in the Davies family and trips became great bonding experiences, to spots in the Canary Islands, Ireland, Costa Rica, Bali, and Morocco. On one such trip, to Noia in northwestern Spain, the waves were big – bigger than Dulcie could handle – and she got thrown, twisted, and pummelled by wall of water.
"After that, I got a bit shaken, and lost my confidence a little bit," she said. "I think I got real frustrated because I wasn't as good as my brother."
For the next couple of years, she stayed off the surfboard, partly out of fear and partly because she had little tolerance for things she felt she wasn't good at. But that did not apply to hockey.
Davies began to specialize in field hockey at the advice of a P.E. teacher. Plus, it was something James didn't do and therefore a way to get the upper-hand in their competitive sibling rivalry. Dulcie quickly rose through the ranks, making English youth national teams at under-16, earning a bronze medal at the U18 European Championships, and at U21.
One of her older England teammates, Becky Dru, shared that she was heading to America to play at Stanford.
"It's a half an hour from the beach and just a few hours from the mountains," Dru explained.
Dulcie did some research, saw lots of photos, and exchanged some e-mails. It seemed like a dream.
"I guess it started from there," Davies said.
* * *
DRU, A TWO-TIME first-team All-American, was finishing a great Stanford career when Davies arrived fresh from six months in Rosario, Argentina, while playing for a local team there. The two shared a passion for the outdoors and in the way they approached life. To Dulcie and Becky, and other teammates like Chisholm, the world beckoned and offered insights and experiences that a classroom, lab, or library could not.
Davies discovered that the "Stanford bubble" didn't have to be biosphere. It didn't have to contain everything. Instead, it could be a place to escape from and return to, like the front door of her London home after weekends on the coast.
"The Stanford bubble is very interesting to me," Davies said. "A lot of people thrive off it. They're so stimulated by all the amazing things going on. I feel like I'm outside the bubble because I'm not so driven by things that interest other people here.
"It's very intense and very different than anything else I'm used to. Being able to get away and see the environment that's real, that's physically present … that's really important to me."
Stanford invites exploration if you're looking for it. Dulcie certainly was and found that side of her rekindled.
She began to surf again, found friends willing to come along for the ride, and got Big Mama -- a 1997 Jeep Cherokee – as a gift on her 21st birthday. Yes, it seems to break down a lot on campus, but somehow finds its way to the mountains and oceans and valleys unscathed and serves as both tour bus and occasional sleeping quarters.
However, there are limits. Skateboarding? The coaches won't allow it after she injured her ankle once and was out of training for months.
But everything else … all those beautiful places … they're out there just waiting to be touched, surfed, or climbed.
It could be an unmarked trail, and a traverse through a lagoon with waist-high water, to a campout on the sand at an unknown beach at Big Sur. Or standing on a rocky outcrop of a precipice at the top of Half Dome, thousands of feet above the valley floor. Or cooking a meal on the side of the road on a surf trip to Santa Barbara, and pushing the driver's seat back to sleep for the night.
"Stanford was the best place for Dulcie, with her fearlessness and her appetite for new challenges and adrenaline," wrote Vicky. "I hope that the rest of her life won't be an anti-climax! She is a great girl and I and the rest of her family and all her friends and teammates are very proud of her."
As Dulcie's season and collegiate field hockey career draw to a close, the future is uncertain. It doesn't appear to include a cubicle and a desk, but you never know. She's at the top of her game and would like to continue to play, but England historically hasn't been keen on inviting American collegians back into the national team system, so playing semipro in Europe or Australia could be the only options.
Both hold fascination, and there will be plenty to explore and exhilarating experiences to be had.
No matter where she is, however, she'll always know that the best days in life could be just down the beach.
* * *
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DULCIE
Favorite surf spots:
1. Chicama, Peru. Hands down, a dream surf spot for me.
2. South Point, Barbados. Perfect water temperatures coupled with a Caribbean island vibe and beautiful left-handed waves. A view of a rustic red and white lighthouse can also be seen from the water.
3. Porthtowan Beach, Cornwall, England. The place where I grew up surfing and the cold water and Cornish landscape reminds me of my roots. It's always nice to share a pint of beer after a cold surf session with my dad and brother.
Places in the Bay Area that every Stanford Student should see:
1. Baker Beach. Great beach in San Francisco that is a perfect place to sit and watch the sunset or even take an after-dark dip in the water. It has an awesome view of the Golden Gate Bridge as well as capturing some good old San Fran culture.
2. Ocean Beach Sand Dunes. Another beach (you may recognize a theme here) that has a huge expanse of sand dunes perfect for watching brave surfers take on the raw conditions. There are also some impressive graffiti walls, reminding you of the urban area that surrounds this natural landscape.
3. Arroyo Seco, Los Padres National Forest (expanding the boarders of the Bay Area a little). A breathtaking river is located deep in a gorge of the national forest and you can explore all the way up the river (swimming is necessary), do cliff jumping, or enjoy some sunbathing on the secret beaches beside the river.
4. Windy Hill, Skyline Blvd. Great hiking trails with an awesome view over Stanford University and the Bay.
5. Año Nuevo State Park. See the rustic Northern Californian coastline and (depending on the season) see hundreds of elephant seals basking in sun.