“Any surfer will tell you with unquestionable passion that surfing is the only life there is-the rest is just fill-in between one swell and the next. Stoked perfectly captures the spirit of this lifestyle that resolves around the whims of the sea.” –Gerry Lopez, Pipeline Master. “Drew Kampion is a master at decoding the wonderful machinations of that tribe of watermen and waterwomen called surfers, who live for the ride. Stoked is the anthem of their lifestyle and their dance.” –Steve Pezman, publisher of The Surfer’s Journal “Drew mixes his micro/macro surf soup, entertaining us with perceptions and word artistry. He always leaves you with a bigger picture and provides a great ride getting there.” –John Severson, artist and found of Surfer magazine “Witty, incisive, and original. No one ever had a better perspective on the unique surfing life we all love than Drew Kampion. This is a fascinating and beautiful book.” –Greg MacGillivray, filmmaker, director of Five Summer Stories, The Living Sea, and Everest. “Stoked is fun and accurate! If anyone is qualified to write this book, it’s Drew Kampion. Drew was an authority 25 years ago, and he still is today.” –Jeff Hakman, Mr. Sunset “Drew Kampion is the only American surf writer who kept my interest during the period when I was World Champion-what everyone else was saying made me just want to look at the pictures. Drew’s writing has always been an excellent barometer on the state of our tribe.”

Drew Kampion is the former editor of Surfer, Surfing, Wind Surf, and Wind Tracks magazines. He founded, edited, and published the award-winning Island Independent, and is the author of the best-selling titles Stoked! A History of Surf Culture and Lost Coast: Stories from the Surf. Drew continues to write for magazines dedicated to the surfing life, as well as others. He lives in Washington. He lives in Washington state

Chapter 1 The Seed Culture “Go to. Strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow clime. Get in and wrestle with the sea; wing your heels with the skill and power that reside in you; hit the sea’s breakers, master them, and ride upon their backs as a king should.” -Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark, 1911 Out of the south they came, paddling their large voyaging canoes-twin-hulled vessels equipped with sails of woven pandanus leaves. They carried men, women, and children, and as many provisions as would fit into the boats. They brought along carefully potted breadfruit, coconut, and pineapple plants, with pigs, dogs, and fowl. They paddled north out of their Polynesian home waters and far into the unknown regions. They crept across the gigantic equatorial waterplain with no sure knowledge of where they were going or what they would find, and when their hopes dimmed and they contemplated retreat, a huge white shark appeared and began to lead them. The most astute sailors the world has ever known, these Polynesians navigated by stars and wind, and the patterns that wind and land and currents created on the water. Seas generated by storms radiate out in swells. If those swells encounter an island, they refract and bend around it (and also reflect off of it) as they pass. The keen observer can detect the residue of such an encounter many miles later, and these people, ever paddling north, following the migration of the golden plover, following the great shark, were keen observers of such things. According to legend, that first weary but resolved flotilla came out of the vast, near-infinite ocean wilderness of the south to draw directly upon the southernmost tip of the southernmost island of the Hawaiian archipelago, the most remote islands on earth.