Adaptive surfer Josh Bogle finds his true north
Story by Lisa Schell
Photo by Bryan McDonald
Josh Bogle carves out a new life in the waters of the island that healed him.
One spring morning 11 years ago, a nurse entered a room in the ICU ward of Maui Memorial Medical Center. She drew back the curtains. Haleakalā towered in the distance as she queued up Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”
Don’t worry about a thing
’Cause every little thing, gonna be all right
She knew her patient, Josh Bogle, loved reggae music. The former competitive snowboarder, who had been in a medically induced coma for more than a week, tried to sing along with the reggae classic despite the breathing tube in his throat.
“There was this little spark, this moment when I knew I had a choice. I could stay where I was, or I could wake up,” said Bogle, who found his way to Maui after his parents purchased a small farm in Haiku nearly 30 years ago. “The Hawaiian word for breath and life is ‘ha.’ I was given my ha back, and I knew everything was going to be all right.”
Ten days after being hospitalized in septic shock from a MRSA (the potentially deadly staph bacteria) infection, Bogle emerged from the blackness with a single breath. Ha.
It was a miracle — a new beginning. But before Maui’s healing waters would bless him with the rich, gratitude-filled life he now enjoys as an adaptive surfer, Bogle had challenges to overcome.
There’s something extraordinary about Bogle, the subject of Finding True North, a documentary produced by Maui resident Matty Schweitzer. Maybe it’s his infectious enthusiasm or his dedication to what he calls “radical optimism.” Although he and his Jack Russell-Chihuahua mix, Maya, are today fixtures of the island’s tight-knit surf community, living Maui wasn’t his original plan.
Bogle grew up in Wyoming, where he was naturally drawn to mountain activities and the outdoors. In the early 2000s, he gained recognition as a competitive backcountry snowboarder just as extreme sports captured the nation’s imagination. While competing in Jackson Hole, he landed “a little bit wrong” off a 40-foot cliff, tweaking his L4 and L5 vertebrae.
Bogle, who was in his 20s and stoked to advance to the next round of competition, didn’t seek treatment. “I just drank the pain away,” he said.
A missed landing on another jump in the finals sent Bogle flying end over end down the slope. It would also send him down the dark hole of opiate addiction sparked by prescription pain medications Percocet and Vicodin.
Bogle thought he could continue competing if he could only manage the pain. He was wrong. On his way to participate in ESPN’s “X Games” in Aspen, Colorado, in 2005, Bogle lost control and rolled his car four times, severely injured his cervical spine and shoulder. That accident would change his life, kicking off a series of health crises that took Bogle to the edge and back again.
He was prescribed Oxycontin, a new, highly touted form of pain management. Bogle took the high-powered opiate as prescribed but soon became dependent. Over the next five years, his dosage increased until he was taking the maximum allowed.
He was addicted. And he knew it. “I started bargaining with God, promising to get healthy if he would just let me live,” Bogle said.
Within six months, Bogle had cut his daily dosage by a third. His progress was short-lived, however, after a routine dental procedure led to a staph infection and endocarditis — a potentially fatal inflammation of the heart valves’ inner lining.
Bogle needed open heart surgery. But his system first had to be free of narcotics, muscle relaxers, sedatives and other medications. He underwent rapid withdrawal in the cardiac unit and suffered a supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) attack, which stopped his heart for 30 full seconds. Maya, his rescue dog from Hāna, was with him at the time and detected the SVT.
After Bogle recovered from the 17-hour surgery, he and Maya — who was now a certified medical assistance dog — returned to Maui in 2012. While whale watching with his mom, he stepped on a fishhook and ended up back in the hospital when the cut became infected with the treatment-resistant staph bacteria MRSA. It had only been four months since Bogle had undergone open-heart surgery.
At Maui Memorial Medical Center, Bogle was placed in a medically induced coma. While it kept him alive, it also limited the flow of oxygenated blood to his limbs. His legs, one hand and several fingers on the other hand would have to be amputated.
Bogle returned to the mainland for amputation surgery with Maya by his side, curled up on the hospital bed where his legs once were. “For three days, she wouldn’t let anyone even think of moving her,” he said.
The amputations did not end Bogle’s struggles, unfortunately. The physiological toll from past medical procedures, infections, organ failure, long-term narcotic dependency and other traumas caused the earlier replaced valve to malfunction. Specialists around the country concurred that without another heart surgery, Bogle likely had only a few months left or, at best, would live out the remainder of his years in a care facility.
Bogle’s parents refused to give up and did all they could to buy him time. They returned to Maui with their 97-pound athlete son, who needed a wheelchair and oxygen just to survive.
“I came back to the Valley Isle expecting to die,” Bogle said. Friends came to say their goodbyes, visiting with him for the last time — or so he thought.
Guilt-ridden over needing 24-hour care and weary of asking for help with even the smallest of tasks, Bogle considered suicide. “I began thinking of ways to make it look like an accident,” he said. “But if I failed, then what?”
Despite his depression, Bogle found solace in nature. He listened to the birds, felt the wind on his face and soaked up the tropical sunshine. He drank raw coconut water, ate fresh fruit from his family’s land and enjoyed fresh fish from his neighbor, a local sushi chef.
The island was healing him. Bogle’s body started to rebound, and he grew stronger. Soon he was stable enough to withstand a second successful heart surgery. It was time to think about his athletic career and the next stage of life, which would end up radically different than what Bogle expected.
Bogle, yet unable to acknowledge the role addiction played in his story, rationalized his brush with death as the cascading effects of an infection. He could simply leave out the Oxycontin part. And he did, for a while.
Bogle’s suicide plan forced him to look within, and he realized he hadn’t been honest with himself. He began working with a collection of healers and physical therapists who would challenge him to be, as he puts it, “radically 100 percent honest.” They inspired him to continue healing without medication and rethink his self-image. Bogle knew he had to let go of his snowboarding lifestyle and the dream of making it big in that arena.
He started going to Baldwin Beach, where Bogle would watch sea turtles in the shore break. “I realized I kind of resembled a sea turtle at that point,” he said. “I would take off my legs, get in the water, and let the waves tumble me around.”
Then Bogle was invited to try surfing, which he considered rehab and part of his recovery. It would never be “his thing,” he said.
The first wave hooked Bogle. No longer “just therapy,” surfing became his passion. He bought a Wavestorm soft top from Costco, watched endless surf movies, and honed his skills at Hookipa, a North Shore surf break popular with locals. In 2018, he entered his first para-surfing competition, Duke’s Ocean Fest, at Waikiki on Oahu.
The more he got into surfing, the more Bogle felt the ocean was helping him reclaim both his life and his soul. It was his kuleana (responsibility) to protect it and keep it healthy. Beach cleanups made sense.
Inspired by pro surfer, standup paddler and foiler Zane Schweitzer’s “Pocket full of Plastic” campaign, which encourages beachgoers to fill their pockets with plastic found along the island’s coastlines, Bogle connected with local nonprofits working to rid Maui Nui of marine debris. That, in turn, connected him to the Schweitzer family.
Bogle would join Zane and his brother Matty, a filmmaker and fellow surfer, on marine debris cleanups in areas only accessible by boat or jet ski. He learned to make art and outdoor furniture from abandoned fishing gear, known as “ghost nets.”
“Watching Josh surf and working to clean up our beaches — he inspired me,” Matty said. “He has this great energy and smile, yet you can tell he’s been somewhere spiritually that most of us haven’t.”
Despite lingering anxiety and depression, Bogle reconnects with that spirituality and his radical optimism whenever he’s in the water.
“Every time I paddle out, it is a gift,” Bogle said. “When I’m in the ocean, I find myself in a meditative state where there is peace and abundance. Sometimes, all the gratitude I feel makes me cry.”
