Returning to the Well

It was mid-morning in the sleepy Mexican village of Barra de la Cruz and the streets were empty, save for the occasional stray dog and surfboard-toting gringo, the latter surely on their way to the same nearby pointbreak that we were heading to.

Jon Rose first came to this part of Oaxaca nearly 20 years ago, during a very different time in his life.

“From 13 until my late 20s, surfing was really the only thing I ever thought about,” says Rose, now 41. “I had a completely one-track mind for a lot of my life, and that was the thing that made me most happy.”

Rose was born in Colorado, but after his parents split when he was young, he and his dad ended up settling in Laguna Beach, which is where he found what he thought would be his life-defining passion for surfing. He was naturally gifted, got his first sponsorship at 13, turned pro at 18 and started chasing points on the World Qualifying Series before eventually turning his focus toward feral adventure and searching for empty waves off the beaten path. In the 2000s, Rose scored everywhere from Indo to Iceland, and you could often find him getting spat out of barrels and onto the covers and spreads of the world’s biggest surf magazines.

Today, however, no one would say that surfing is the thing that defines Jon Rose. In fact, even though Rose lived and breathed surfing for so many years, it has almost become a footnote in his life after a series of events was set in motion a decade ago.

As we drove down the winding dirt road through Barra, Rose told the beginning of his story as most people know it today. It’s a story that he’s likely told a thousand times over the years to friends and strangers, journalists and donors, CEOs and faceless crowds at public speaking engagements. Yet Rose’s