A few days ago I sat on the beach at Pipeline for 10 hours watching 253+ surfers (we tried to count) battle for waves, positioning and the opportunity at a life changing wave. It felt like I was sitting on the 50 yard line of planet earth.

After going to the North Shore pretty regularly for the last 20 years or so, it still (and always) feels like you’ve entered the surfing upside down. It takes a day or two to smash all the eggshells you instinctively want to walk on when you get there. But at some point, you notice your tennis shoes have been replaced by flip flops and that is when you know you’ve officially entered the North Shore Feral Kingdom.

Once inside, your smeared sunscreen stays caked on like warpaint until you board your departing flight home. You now consider the bed of a stranger’s truck reliable transportation and a damp corner with a wet towel reasonable lodging.

Your trunks will never dry and you will never change them. Inside the Kingdom, you worry about nothing except surfing and showing respect to the locals. Your eyes turn red as stop signs from staring at the sun and opening them on every duck dive. Your stomach rashes up in a way you never thought possible. It is red, pink and somehow purple and blue too. Your blood becomes thick from exclusively drinking sugary drinks and rum. Thick, sticky sand lives on your feet (it will not wash off) and runs up your legs and basically now lives on everything. It eventually ends up in your bed and you will do nothing about that. When you say goodbye to anyone, you promise a “couple beers later” although it’s rare you actually do that with them.

Your biggest challenge each morning is making it from the dark room you’re staying in over to Sunrise Shack (Koa and Alex Smith’s coffee spot) where they serve you a Bullet Coffee — basically a regular coffee but I think it has a bar of surf wax melted in it. Then the girls behind the counter will try to get you to drink a shot of Noni juice — which tastes and smells like a dirty goat, but apparently makes your fingernails strong and your skin clear. You drink it.

I briefly saw Noa Deane while I was there. He was fully committed to the North Shore Feral Kingdom — which I especially enjoyed because many thought he’d never make it on the North Shore. But I can attest to you that he is making it and he is thriving. For proof, scroll down and make sure you watch his new film Noz Vid (has an especially sick Hawaii section). It only took one look at Noa to see that that his eyes were firmly inhabited by that little bit of “Psycho Ward” one needs to get waves and thrive here.

When I saw him, he had just purchased an iPhone water housing and was shooting videos of Eithan Osborne at a sandbar after surfing Backdoor for like 7 hours. He had a sloppy pile of clothes, car keys, a towel, swim fins, a surfboard and a boogie board. He put the fins on and started clopping around the sand, his stomach rashed to a bloody pulp.

I asked him if he needed me to to watch his stuff before he went out. He looked at me dripping wet with those stop sign eyes, glancing up at a heavy looking crew of locals behind us who were all huddled around their raised trucks, blasting music, enjoying a Sunday afternoon in the feral kingdom.

“Nah, no one will jack it. Couple beers later?”

He was right. No one would jack it, but we probably wouldn’t get those beers later.

Noa left his stuff and went clopping down toward the water in his swim fins, dragging the boogie board, everything covered in sand.

The best part of this place is that somehow the safest and most dangerous place you can be is in the water. Which is exactly what we’re all here for.—Travis Ferré