Raising A Soul Surfer by Rick Bundschuh, Cheri Hamilton

young and self-absorbed, I guess we thought we could live in their home and eat their food indefinitely, especially because she was such a great cook.
    We decided to pool our money and eventually buy a van that we could live in, figuring that it would be a cheap and leak-proof way to surf all over the island. So we went out and camped on the beach until we were able to find a van. It didn’t take long to come up with the $500.
    It was summertime, when the surf is normally flat on the North Shore; but there were lots of other things to do: diving, fishing or hiking the Hanakapi’ai trail along the face of the sheer Napali Cliffs to a magnificent valley and huge waterfall.
    What we mostly did was pick up puka shells. These are small disk-shaped shells, actually the remains of a larger shell, with a hole (
puka
, in Hawaiian) in the center. They were strung together to make a puka shell necklace, which were, in the early seventies, all the rage. Islanders who had been walking over these shells all their lives suddenly realized that a can full of these fairly common little shells could net over $50—a significant sum at that time.
    Our van was parked across from the huge cave and right in front of a surf spot appropriately enough called Tunnels. Living in our van near Haena Beach Park, we saw that some families had roped off entire areas of the beach to keep others from mining their “claim,” not unlike the gold rush in early California.
    Chris and I decided that it would be simpler to find our puka shells underwater, so we spent much of the summer snorkeling around the shallows with an empty soda can in our hands, turning up the sand for the little shells. This activity kept us in shape and ready to surf when the waves returned.
    Tunnels reef was the first place I ever surfed in Kauai. It was about the only place on the north side of the island that had waves during the summer. I never liked the wave all that much, because it dumped on a shallow reef, and I always came back in with cuts all over my feet. The wave runs along a deep drop-off channel, which was very spooky and a haven for sharks.
    I couldn’t know then that this surf break would feature so largely in my life story; for it was at Tunnels that a shark attacked my daughter, Bethany, many years later.

CHAPTER
6
Captured by Christ
    You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you
would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that
whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you
.
JOHN 15:16,
NASB
     

    I keep telling people who hear about our past that Tom and I were
not
hippies.
    The distinction to most people isn’t that great; but in my mind, even back then, it was important. What consumed me was the addiction of surfing, not dropping out, not political activism or communing with anything other than a nice glassy wave at an uncrowded beach or reef break.
    Every waking moment I spent strategizing my daily plan to find and catch the best waves. I was the epitome of a
Soul Surfer
.
    Hippies . . . well, hippies were the people living in Taylor Camp.

    In the late 1960s, Howard Taylor, brother of actress Elizabeth Taylor, bought a chunk of land way out near the end of the roadon Kauai. He wanted to build a house, but the state wouldn’t grant him a permit to develop it; instead they wanted to condemn the empty land and then add it to nearby Ke’e Lagoon at the end of the road.
    Taylor got fed up with the grasping state when they told him to pay taxes on the land they were trying to condemn; so in 1969, Taylor invited a bunch of hippies to camp out on his property free of charge.
    Located near Tunnels Beach, Taylor Camp became a magnet for peaceniks who built lean-tos and bamboo tree houses out of found materials. They formed a primitive communal society, with few rules and even fewer clothing requirements, at the extreme edge of paradise.
    Elizabeth Tayor’s son joined Taylor Camp. On a visit to Kauai, her son