Drew Kampion's "Almondeyes No. 2" originally ran in the September 1970 issue of SURFER. This version is slightly edited and shortened.

The Ranch is a thing that happens to your mind. It covers you and moves into you and changes you. The Ranch is California at its best. It is clean and raw and almost silent, and the waves that break there, when they are breaking right, are the best to be found anywhere in America proper.

Ranch waves are different even than other good California spots, and it is said that no one just walks in and rides the Ranch well. It takes time and experience and perception to ride the almond-shaped, pinwheeling pockets; and the surfers that ride it the best are well-respected. People like Rennie Yater and J. Riddle and Rolf Aurness. The waves at the Ranch are generally fast, hard-breaking, and attractive; it is a wave that tends to push a surfer past the bullshit stage and into truly refined wave riding.

So . . . this trip we took. I first remember cows: big red-and-white ones with broad, flat faces and huge dispassionate eyes. Standing, paused in the lull of a graze, all slobber and drip-mouthed, pulverizing the chlorophyll from fresh grass. And as we wove down twisting canyons on the way to the surf, the cows, surprised by our approach, would charge off ahead of Motorskill, running dead ahead of us down the road, then veering off to the side and lumbering to a heaving halt in some field to watch with childlike eyes the passage of our threat.

Little did they know that Motorskill was a vehicle of peace, for it bore no flags. Just yer usual psychedelic armor, a shipment of anxious voyagers, and the instruments of creation (cameras, surfboards, and a #2 pencil).

We spent three days surfing at the Ranch. The nights we spent in nearby Buellton at a motel where we all had a fine time, though, having a lot of weird people in the group, we rather freaked the proprietress, if in the end she did ask us to all come back again sometime. I couldn’t stand all the sinus-blocked snoring, however, and spent the nights in my own van. I’d get up at dawn to the sound of John starting Motorskill. My sleeping bag was warm, though, and it was a struggling getting into my 28° pants and shirt and two pairs of socks and boots and a sweater and a heavy coat. Finally, I’d step out and there was Motorskill puffing out its cloud of early morning vapor, the grass behind the motel all capped in crisp, snowy frost. They were good mornings, and by the time we’d get over to Andersen’s for breakfast, our cheeks were red, stinging after the repeated slaps of cold air.

We filled the counter section. There was John then Barbara then Daran then Art then Brad then Mike then Annette then Connie then Angie then Rick then an old couple who both dunked their doughnuts in their coffee, then me. One thing, if you’re ever in Buellton and hit Andersen’s for breakfast, don’t order the Mexican omelet. It’s fatal.

The road into the Ranch is a convoluted little one-and-half-lane twister, a merciless bitch for Dramamine addicts, and rough indeed on 12 people traveling as loose cargo in the back of a seatless bus. The road winds through canyons and fields and over crests and between mushrooms of forest and through herds of cows and flowers. Until it comes to San Augustine.

When we got to San Augustine, it was so glassy the waves seemed to be made of spider silk. It wasn’t just glassy, it was a 

 glassy; as firm as choppy, if that makes any sense.

The waves were small: three and four feet, but they had these incredible hollow places, which were sort of almond-shaped, and they had a habit of coiling around a few twists and then spitting. We called these hollow spots tubes, and Mike and Brad and Angie decided they’d go tube riding. And did. For three days.

I remember only two waves clearly, both from the second day, at Rights and Lefts: Mike Tabeling taking off late on a four-foot wave, the wave coming over thirty or forty feet on either side of him as he turned to go right; in the descending avalanche you could see Mike still on his board, at the bottom of the wave, sort of planted in it and just about stopped dead still. It seemed his only move was to straighten off or get eaten (though technically he had eaten it already). Instead, Mike stayed there, aimed to his right, water falling all over him, lateral motion stopped dead, just getting moved towards the beach at four or five miles per hour, or whatever speed a Ranch wave moves towards the beach at. Then he sniffed something out of all that chaos and white confusion. Crouched over his board and totally blinded by the exploding wave, he SENSED out some power and direction. His own little bone-covered computer sorted out all those conflicting vectors and selected one with a positive feel to it, and off he went. From the beach it looked strange: completely covered in whitewater and 20 feet behind the curl, he began suddenly to accelerate, inching through the confusion, still totally blind, working with some radar or beam that normal folk aren’t into yet, gaining more and more speed till he broke through the tube from the outside into the inside and finished the wave with a twenty-yard tunnel shot and was spit out the end.

The other wave was Rick Griffin’s. Not that it was really 

 wave, but he rode it, and in it there was one perfect moment: the wave hollowed out and fringing, raked a bit by the off-shore for twenty feet ahead of him. Rick on his cruiser (or Charger) left hand directing ahead, long hair flying like a head full of snakes, just touching the lip of the wave, and another long snake of kelp waiting in the wall ahead of him, implanted like a fossil in the wall of a transparent cave, venomless and silent. Without time.

While Angie and Mike and Brad McCaul surfed, John and Art and Brad took photographs and dug the generally good vibrations. Meanwhile, the four chicks (basically teenyboppers when you get right down to it) went rock hunting and shell collecting and tide-pooling, all of which is fun and easy to do at the Ranch where rocks and shells and tides abound.

What’s neat about the Ranch with a pass is that you can drive down onto the beach at San Augustine and just cruise right on down the sand to Rights and Lefts (not to be confused with Lefts and Rights, wherever that is). The sand is hard, too, and it’s clean and squeaks when you shuffle on through it. Atop many of the rocks, however, caps of sticky crude oil glisten in the afternoon sun, while offshore in the silver sparkling sea, oil islands stand like the invading machines from Orson Wells’ 

. It’s interesting to note at this point (also very pertinent to the story) that the oil companies (after maintaining a discreet silence after last year's oil disaster and subsequent surge of aroused public ire) have inaugurated public relations advertising programs designed to once again win the hearts of the American public (who want to, and will, believe anything that they are told). This ad campaign is in the form of new anti-pollution drives (one company even bought Astronaut Scott Carpenter), give-away games, and a lot of mindless crap about how oil companies are really only interested in making this a better world a gallon at a time.

Wasn’t nobody thinkin’ much about that on our little trip, though. Mainly it was surfing and filming on our minds, or their minds, and that was exactly what was going on. Brad McCaul ripped when the waves got head high, riding hard and tight and bitchin’; and Angie, who brought his gun instead of his hotdog board, just stuck it in the eye and kept it there. All in all it was good fun and good surfing and good filming. The sun was warm and the wind was staying offshore, and it was a fine place to take an afternoon nap.

Afterward, when everyone split up, it was like a ball of wet sand falling apart. First it broke into pieces, which in turn broke back into grains. The whole is greater than its parts. Twelve people together is more than 12 people apart. And the Ranch is more than how-many-ever surf spots it is stacked end to end. The Ranch, my dear folk, is what you bring to it—and what you bring from it.

[Photos: Art Brewer, Ron Stoner, Connie Katoski-Rocke]

Editor's note: Watch the full 12-minute Pacific Vibrations Ranch sequence 

 If you're around my age—58—and grew up surfing in California, this is about as close to time-travel as it gets. For me, it is mostly sweetness, but sad as well. I'm moved by the empty lineup, the small but perfect waves, the landscape, the hair, the youth. My throat tightens at the thought that Griffin, Severson, and Tabeling have all died. I'm relieved that the Ranch wasn't, as Severson predicts in the film, paved over the tracts houses and malls. I'm confused and a little ashamed at how I quietly cheer each time public access to the Ranch gets denied—I'm for the People, but the People will almost certainly destroy what is magical about the Ranch. Finally, and more cheerfully, I've been grinning all afternoon at what constituted a memorable surfing moment in 1970. Scroll back up and read Drew's account of Mike Tabeling's whitewater-takeoff-to-barrel. Acrobatic and extrasensory and completely amazing! Now watch the actual ride—and don't get too caught up in the deeper whys and wherefores of splicing the wave into Tabeling's slow-mo rolling lip-lock with his new Ranch squeeze.

And here's the Rick Griffin wave that Drew also talks about, which I actually love, but more for the stylish set of turns Rick does after the trim section that Drew raves about.

For my money, the slamdunk best surfer of the trip was Angie Reno, beefcake boy-toy and the Pride of San Fernando. Angie's riding an eight-something Sunset Beach gun for some unknown reason, but he's got the tube setup figured out, a Chinese acrobat pocket crouch, and the cutback at the end of his clip is probably the best turn in the whole movie.

PS: If you haven't already read it, here's 

 to see more Art Brewer photos of the trip.

MOTORSKILL TRIPPING WITH DREW KAMPION: "DON'T ORDER THE MEXICAN OMELET. IT'S FATAL."

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