It’s an ideal July morning on the soft sands of Lake Tahoe at Steamers Beach. Almost 200 square feet of polished azure glass in the form of Lake Tahoe stretches all the way to the Sierra silhouettes of South Lake Tahoe in front of me.

Morgan Kriz, Keith Sheffield, Phil Seager and I are up well before the sun has had time to heat the sand to scalding and the idea of getting wet still seems a little chilly. Although we came here to be on the water, it wasn’t to go swimming.

Seager, owner of Tahoe Paddle & Oar and born again stand-up paddler, has agreed to show us firsthand Tahoe’s latest recreational craze – stand-up paddling. Each of us armed with a surfboard and a seven-foot-long, funny-looking paddle, we’re about to step onto liquid and, as Phil says, “fly across the water.”

“[Stand-up paddling] is just exploding,” Seager says. “I think once people find out how much fun it is, how easy it is, it’s kind of addicting really. Last year people started getting into it and there weren’t that many boards available. This year, there are boards available and it’s just off the charts right now.”

Paddle boards are generally 11 to 16-feet long and brand new cost anywhere from $1,200 to $3,000 and possibly more. A paddle will run you about $200 new. Tahoe Paddle & Oar rents boards for $20 an hour. The longer boards are designed for speed; the shorter ones designed to catch waves and then there’s a group of hybrids somewhere in the middle that are used for both. Phil rents boards injected with dense foam, so they won’t “explode” at elevation, with an EVA Foam rubber deck. Most boards are about 28 inches wide, which provides a certain level of stability.

Mounting the board seems to take up most of the instruction time. The basic gist is to center your body weight by starting out on all fours and gradually moving up to balance on the knees first, then the feet. The stance is the basic athletic stance – feet hip-width apart, knees slightly bent.

Seager instructs us to hold the paddle, which could more accurately be called a spatula, concave side facing out (a direct contrast to holding a kayak paddle). But the technique works. He tells us to put the blade in at the tip of the board and pull back only to our feet; paddling two strokes on one side and then switching to the other, finding a rhythm.

It doesn’t take long before I understand what Seager means by flying. Standing on the surface of the water with only three inches of foam separating my feet from Tahoe’s deep blue is a delightfully, dizzying feeling.

“I feel like I could keep falling down to the bottom if I fell off the board,” Morgan comments. And I agree. The water feels akin to air underneath the board.

I’m empowered. The morning sun sparkling on the water, me standing tall on my board sliding silently across its surface; I’m in control of my own destiny. There’s no sputtering engine and I’m not submissively sitting. This is surf culture on fresh water. This is the ultimate tanning sport. This is nirvana.