This article ran in the August 2013 issue of Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited and shortened.

Mike Armstrong sits astride his Polaris ATV as it climbs the steep, rocky incline bordering one of his orange groves. He is making the rounds, checking the irrigation valves, and ensuring that the trees are sufficiently watered. It has been a dry February—it is almost unprecedented to be watering this time of year—and the lack of rain means he has to tap into the spring-fed reservoirs that provide water for his oranges and avocados. At 60, Armstrong's sturdy frame barely shows any middle-age paunch, but a life spent under the brutal sun and the rigors of farm life are visible in the lines on his face. His hair and mustache are white but a lifelong athleticism has brought him to this point with dignity intact.

The daily routine is hard; 860 acres is a lot of ground to tend, though much of it is given over to grazing cattle for the cow-calf operation. Armstrong still gets in the ocean a few times a week, perhaps the only rancher in the valley to do so. It is unlikely that the other ranchers are much aware of his past, before he shifted focus from the water to the land. He was once of the elite, the top few surfers who dominated the lineup at Pipeline in its Edenic days before the crowds and commercialism changed things. Those of us who knew Mike back then always wondered why fame eluded him. In fact, he eluded fame. That was never the point. Not to Armstrong. He shied away from the limelight, rejected the circus. He walked away.

Armstrong was born an outsider. His first passport was issued by Venezuela and listed Maracaibo as his place of birth. He spent his first years in a jungle camp where his father worked as a petroleum engineer for Chevron. When Bob Armstrong moved his family to Laguna Beach, Mike gravitated toward the water. He spent hours among the rocks at Brooks Street when the tide was out, amazed by the diversity of animal life: limpets, snails, crabs, octopi, and sculpin. His mother, Tory, could not believe how much time he devoted to the tide pools. Later, he would dive for lobster and abalone with his father, often swimming out to Second Reef. When he was 10, a neighbor gave him his first surfboard, a balsa Velzy-Jacobs. He found his avocation.

Armstrong threw himself into his new pursuit with a passion. When he broke his back in a car accident that took his mother’s life, his return to surfing helped ground him through a difficult period. His father viewed this newfound interest warily. The counterculture had come to Laguna in a big way and Bob Armstrong, like much of the local community, viewed surfers with suspicion. Mike spent as much time in the water as possible and, as happens when one devotes so much time to an activity, he got good. Fast.

By the time he was 16, Armstrong had become one of visionary shaper Kenny Warner’s test pilots. Warner shepherded Laguna through the shortboard revolution and Armstrong was given a variety of radical designs to try out, in quick succession. He rode well at Trestles, Salt Creek, and, most crucially, his childhood playground Brooks Street. He became known, among surfers in south Orange County, as the best goofyfoot from Laguna.

While his reputation among locals grew, the relationship with his father was tested. After what now seems a trifling argument, Mike moved in with a fellow surfer’s family. Then, in 1970, after graduating from high school, he moved to Oahu. His mother was from a military family and grew up on the east shore town of Kailua. Mike had already enjoyed many Hawaiian vacations surfing the South Shore but this was his first time surfing “country.” The North Shore was a whole different experience. He benefited from the counsel of Laguna natives Greg Elterman and Billy Hamilton, who were well established in the North Shore community. Elterman introduced Armstrong to the surfer who was universally recognized as the best at Pipeline, Gerry Lopez. The two became fast friends. Lopez lived in Honolulu and would often pick Armstrong up after classes at Leeward Community College in Pearl City, driving him back to the North Shore.

The crowds were manageable at that time, even at the best breaks, and Armstrong’s low-key, respectful demeanor and obvious talent helped ease his passage into the ranks of the surfing elite. His father was harder to impress. Once, during a visit to the North Shore, his father commented that surfers just sit around on their “sticks” all day. Mike decided to take him out at Laniakea to get pounded by the whitewater for a while, which gave Bob a newfound respect for surfers. “From that point on, the relationship between us got better and better,” Mike recalls.

Meanwhile, at Pipeline, Armstrong entered into the rotation and quickly found his niche. Soon he was riding Lightning Bolts. During the winter of’71, Armstrong stood out with performances on a bright yellow board. It was a used Wayne Santos that he pulled out of the Lightning Bolt shop in Honolulu. With its concave nose, low entry rocker, and rolled bottom, the board was unsuitable for Rocky Point or Sunset. But Armstrong had an idea where it just might work.

And work it did. He recognized something that the others hadn’t: the rolled bottom would hold the board to the steep face at Pipeline, allowing him to ride high just under the lip. His performance on that yellow Bolt established Mike as one of the elite Pipe surfers.

“Army made quite an impression, not just with me but with everyone, when he showed up at Pipeline,” says Lopez. “He was a pretty laid back guy. His surfing style was like that too. He ripped but he was real casual, smooth. He was one of the real soul monsters out there.”

In the lineup, Armstrong sat alongside Lopez, whose primacy was undisputed. The rest of the pecking order is hazy. Kent Smith, who had reason to pay attention as one of Lightning Bolt’s stalwarts, considered Pipeline in the early ’70s to be ruled by a triumvirate. “Army's approach was real technical. He surfed it with almost machinist precision. Mike was like a developed athlete. Gerry was artful, and Rory [Russell] just couldn’t help himself. “

One wind-blown day in 1971, with a mixed-up swell running, Armstrong was surfing Pipeline with just a few others. The beach was deserted except for a few people setting up a table in the sand. Hardly anyone expected the very first Pipeline Masters to be called that day, least of all Lopez, who had gone home after another surfer informed him the event was called off. But it wasn’t. Armstrong was waved to shore, and just like that he was "invited" to the inaugural Masters. Jeff Hakman won. Armstrong, who took the slot vacated by Lopez, took second.

If the inaugural event merits an asterisk, given the lousy surf and Lopez' no-show, the next year does not. In prime conditions, Gerry earned the top honors and Armstrong, again, was runner-up. Next year, same thing: Lopez first, Army second. He kept at it for another three years, never finishing lower than 5th, then hung it up. While Armstrong's long run of Masters performances legitimized his standing at Pipe, it did little to garner media attention. He remained in the shadows. “Army would be a Hall of Famer anywhere else for what he did in the Pipe Masters alone,” observes Kent Smith. But that wasn’t really the point. The limelight did not suit Armstrong’s temperament. “Pipe was, to me, a dance,” he says. “To be honest with you, I felt very comfortable out there. But you had to have a teaspoon of confidence and a tablespoon of respect when dealing with Pipeline.”

By the mid-'70s, surfing was undergoing a fundamental shift in values. For Armstrong, the fun was lost. Surfing, in his view, had a spiritual dimension that gave him access to something ineffable. “When you’re deep inside the hole at Pipe and the foamball is coming up and it wants to consume you and lifts you up and your tail is getting all squirrelly, boy oh boy are you dancing. And if you do it right, get up high enough, get a little push from the spit, you can dance right out of there. Every time I’d come out of one of those things, I’d think, ‘Wow, wasn’t I lucky. Wasn’t I privileged to be able to partake in that experience.’”

During the hot summer months, when the land is parched and the trees are thirsty, Armstrong works into the night, irrigating the orange and avocado groves. It is better to water after the sun goes down and the long workdays become even longer. On one such night, around eight years ago, Armstrong was checking the irrigation valves on the northwest side of the ranch, in one of the avocado groves. He pulled up to the valves on his Polaris ATV, turned off the engine, and dismounted. A deafening roar sounded right next to him. He knew immediately what it was and, by instinct, covered his neck with both his hands as he rolled under the ATV, making his long, lanky body as small as possible. He dodged the expected pounce and lay motionless, listening for the sound of footfalls in the mulch. There was silence except for his own breath and beating heart. After what seemed like hours, he reached up, turned the ignition switch, and flipped on the lights. He waited. Nothing happened. Heart pounding, he leaped onto the Polaris, turned around and made a beeline for the farmhouse. When he reached home and entered his bedroom, his wife Kathy woke up. She was used to him leaving their bed at all hours and normally slept through his comings and goings. Not this time. “She must have sensed my aura,” he says. His body shook as told her about his encounter with the mountain lion. “I’ve been in big waves before but I’ve never felt adrenaline like that.”

The next morning he returned to the site and parked in front of the irrigation valves. He walked around the large avocado tree growing next to a fence meant to keep livestock out of the grove. Spread out beneath the tree was the carcass of a freshly killed doe.

Armstrong slipped away quietly from the North Shore and full-time surfing. His departure was unnoticed by many. He took on the challenge of running a farm and cattle ranch and succeeded. The land was raw, untamed, given over to grazing cattle when his family bought it. Many of its features—the grassy hills, the oak-laden ravines—resemble the unspoiled Orange County landscape of Army’s youth. But it is more exaggerated here. The hills are steeper, the ravines denser with foliage. The coast at the mouth of Toro Creek is wilder, sharper, less worn down by time and the pounding sea.

Armstrong's marriage is as old as the ranch. He was married in 1977, the same year he purchased the land. Together he and Kathy raised two children, Katy and Jared, who still live nearby in the town of Cayucos.

Toro Creek Ranch became the focal point of the family. Mike’s father, who, along with his second wife Margaret, was instrumental in acquiring the property, loved to stay on the ranch. He jogged the dirt roads to the top of the property and sometimes down to the coast.

On August 21, 2006, Mike’s birthday, his father was struck by a motorcycle and died. A birthday card sent that day, father to son, was their last correspondence. Mike has it framed on the wall in the living room of the ranch house. His father’s ashes were scattered on the property and his presence seems palpable. When Mike's daughter Katy was married at the ranch in 2008, Mike reminded the guests that the ranch wouldn’t exist in its current state without his father, Katy’s grandfather. “This is what he lived for,” says Mike, “keeping the family as tight as possible.”

Armstrong is not a gentleman farmer. His days are long and the labor arduous. The property is stocked with machinery and Armstrong, by necessity, has become master of all of them. He banks the profits of a good year as insurance against the less profitable years that are sure to follow. But it suits him, the hard work, the uncertainty, even the danger. It’s the land itself, its enormity, and the challenges it presents. You have to work within certain parameters, deal with contingencies, prepare for the unexpected. Nature, ultimately, has the upper hand, and you must work in concert with it, synch up with its rhythms, to have any measure of success. Armstrong knows all of this.

Various figures from his surfing past have paid visits. Lopez, when he first visited, thought to himself, “Now I get it.” Armstrong never completely broke his ties in Hawaii. He owned property on Kauai for many years and currently owns an old beach house at Kawela Bay. In the springtime, if the winter brings enough rain, he and the family slip away for a few weeks to Oahu. He watches the current generation dominate the lineup at Pipeline. He admires their skill and their athleticism but wonders if they experience the wave in the same way he and his cohorts did, 40 years ago. Do they get the same spiritual experience?

Back in Central California, as the sun dips towards the horizon, Armstrong surveys his property from one of the peaks overlooking the ranch house. Nestled among the groves, the building is dwarfed by the immensity of the land around it. The portion of property given over to farming is small compared to the undeveloped hills where cattle graze. He looks upon the three reservoirs that provide water to irrigate his crops. He gazes down at the dense stand of live oak that lines the creek bed, now shadowed by the steep hills around it. This is where the big cats like to hang out. Armstrong sometimes sees them in the trees as he ambles toward home at the end of the day. Falcons, hawks, and buzzards ride the airstream, making loops over the open land, keeping an eye out for prey or carrion. He is five miles off the coast, a short drive to the house where his children live and his surfboards are stored.

He dreams of the day the ranch can pretty much run itself, when he can delegate many of his chores to able hands. His daughter Katy is finishing up an agricultural degree and, along with her brother, is interested in continuing the family operation. Ideally, Army and Kathy can spend more time on their property in Kawela Bay, with its mango, papaya, plumeria, and coco palm. He could surf outside the reef protecting the bay or paddle across its lengths. Army smiles when remembering his days at the top of the pecking order at Pipeline.

There is a peaceful, almost somber moment when the shadows lengthen, then diminish at the end of a day’s work on the ranch. “Don’t think for a minute I take any of this for granted,” says Armstrong. He is as attuned to the cycles of nature now as he was at the height of his powers on the North Shore. The vitality of the land relies on this understanding. It comes slower here, across seasons and years—much longer intervals than the split-second adjustments he was known for making at Pipeline—but the instincts on which he relies are the same.

"BEFORE THE HERD," MIKE ARMSTRONG PROFILE BY KEVIN O'SULLIVAN

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

The Sunday Joint

Contests