Gatekeeping the Surf

Twelve thousand years ago, people stood on the shores of the California coast just south of Point Conception and north of present-day Gaviota and marveled at their good fortune. Mild weather. A south-facing coastline protected from the shrieking winds to the north. Bountiful seafood, plenty of game in the hills, and spring-fed creeks spilling down from low-lying coastal mountains. In the winter, as they launched canoes from sandy creek mouths tucked into the lees of points, they would have paddled wide of waves peeling like pinwheels; perhaps the paddlers looked into green tubes spiraling toward the clean yellow sand, an oar raised in appreciation and awe. History has long forgotten, if it ever knew, the names of the original inhabitants of that idyllic stretch of coast. After who knows how many generations, the people living there came to call themselves the Chumash—a word that translates roughly as “shell collectors.”

When the Spanish settled in Southern California in the 1700s, the Chumash were a bustling