The Captain of Orella

Guner Tautrim first met Captain Buzz Taylor at the yacht club in Redwood City, in late 1997, over a pitcher of beer. It was an interview of sorts for both of them, and Buzz had taken the long way to the meeting. 

After retiring at 55, and in need of a project to stave off the stereotypical boredom, he proceeded to build his own sailboat. Five years later, a stout 55-foot sloop named Ishi was seaworthy. Buzz, on the other hand, had never sailed a day in his life. To the dropped jaws of friends and family, he glided underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and circumnavigated the globe over the next few years. 

When the two met, Buzz was prospecting crew for his next mission, from Hawaii to Australia via the Coconut Milk Run, perhaps with an eye toward succession. Tautrim was seeking a cool-headed captain who wouldn’t blow gaskets daily like his last one did on the passage from Santa Barbara to Oahu. The Hawaii crossing had tested what he’d picked up in a couple basic sailing classes, while also racking up the remaining hours needed to secure his captain’s license. From Buzz’s angle, the kid was overqualified. Each man passed the other’s test, and they shook hands on Tautrim jumping aboard Ishi in the spring, as soon as he finished his last semester of college. 

Arriving in Honolulu early, Tautrim’s froth was bubbling over for the potential of scoring empty and spitting reef-pass tubes. He got to work scrubbing the boat, procuring supplies, rounding up additional crew, and trying to shake off the mainlander angst over getting things done on island time. 

What he didn’t know then was that his six-month voyage would drift into two and a half years of surf fantasy and maritime nightmare. And what he couldn’t have known was how much his time at sea would shape his future back on land.

*

As I emerge from the traffic choke point of Santa Barbara, headed north on the 101, the rolling hills of the Gaviota Coast open up and hawks fly in slow circles above. I’m on the hunt for Orella Ranch and Guner Tautrim, who represents the sixth generation of its stewardship. 

Golden-hour sun paints a tangerine glow on the grassy hillsides as I pull into the guts of the ranch. Orella (pronounced oh-RAIL-yuh in local parlance) is a 300-acre chunk of land that’s been in Tautrim’s family since 1866. It rolls down from the Santa Ynez foothills to the 101 and stares straight out to the Channel Islands. Look left, there’s El Capitan. Look right, Refugio.

As soon as my car door shuts, Tautrim yells from behind me in a voice that sounds like it originates from the base of an old oak. Looking worn from a full day that doesn’t include PowerPoint, the 50-year-old cruises over in muddy hiking boots, faded work pants cinched by a Grateful Dead belt, and a T-shirt that’s seen its day and doesn’t care. A stained hat caps his mug, which is stubbled with a black-and-gray goatee trying to become a beard. We exchange bear hugs, and he offers to get me reacquainted with the land. It’s not my first visit to Orella, but it’s been a while. 

The homestead is cloaked in Monterey cypress, loquat trees, and too many plants to name, at least for me. Tautrim can rattle them off like the alphabet. His house, which he crafted using a combination of natural building techniques, including an old English-style cob construction, nestles into the landscape. Across from it are two open sheds, one sheltering a mixed-era quiver of boards, the other a quiver of shovels, all of which await eager handlers. The detritus of badly suntanned boards and rusty bikes decaying under trees tells the story of “Hey, bro, can I stash this here for just a couple weeks?” 

Beyond the sheds lies the family’s kitchen garden, kitted out with a handful of raised beds flowing with a mixture of spring greens, weeds that need weeding, and a few too many gopher holes for Tautrim’s liking. Heidi, Tautrim’s wife and former high school sweetheart, moves swiftly through the beds, gathering an armful of veggies mixed with a kaleidoscope of edible nasturtium, borage, and calendula flowers. 

A stone’s throw from the front porch sits a 4-foot mini-ramp that the Tautrim boys, Kai and Sequoia, who represent the seventh generation of Orella, session regularly. A ’60s-era hippie school bus merges with the overgrown spring grasses, and a converted shipping container serves as Kai’s shaping bay. 

Tautrim suggests we check on the pigs. I can smell the Kunekune before I see them. A biotic orchestra of scents rides the afternoon breeze. Most of it doesn’t register with my suburban nose, but I try to pick out a few notes: definitely some freshly made compost. Plump loquats add an overripe sweetness to the waft, which becomes overpowered by the meal du jour for the pigs: spent hops and grain from a local craft brewery. Tautrim hefts a few shovelfuls of the mash into their trough, eliciting a chorus of primal grunts and moshing for pole position. The Kunes are an heirloom breed from New Zealand, the swine of choice for permaculturists because their short snouts don’t till the land. 

The permaculture movement emerged through the 1970s, when Tasmanian biologist Bill Mollison and his buddy David Holmgren developed a set of alternative design principles that fused Indigenous wisdom with modern ecology and systems thinking. The aim was to live in tune with nature and, as the name suggests, keep it that way for the long now. Tautrim has been stewarding Orella guided by these conventions for the last 20 years. Not a bad start, I figure. 

He uses a “multi-species rotational grazing” style of pasturing his animals made popular by Joel Salatin, a mentor of Tautrim’s, also known as the “Lunatic Farmer” from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. A small herd of Scottish Belted Galloway beef cattle mow the low grasses, while a crossbreed of sheep chomp the head-high coastal sage scrub. Tautrim focuses the Kune around the base of the fruit trees. As their collective hooves spread manure around the joint, the bewildering alchemy of nature magically transforms dirt into life-giving soil. 

With permaculture, you have to abandon the deeply ingrained image of neat, monocrop rows. Walking from one zone to the next, I wonder, Where’s the farm? Tautrim plucks purple mulberries and tangy loquats, popping them into his mouth as he guides me through bush tunnels. This is when I realize the farm is everywhere. Or that it’s less a farm and more a ranch with snacking sections. On the surface, it’s messy. But as Tautrim unveils the hidden connections between the plants and animals they’ve cultivated over the years, it becomes obvious that the Tautrims’ approach is a highly intentional mess. When you zoom out, the unkempt nature of the place cleans up into pastoral perfection. 

But Tautrim’s quick to course-correct me from drawing that conclusion. “California is fucked up with 200 years of abuse,” he says. “We inherited a problem.” Once the industrial ag practices in the US supplanted Indigenous methods that were actually sustainable, he explains, we screwed the land up pretty good. Every year on the ranch is a game of agricultural whack-a-mole, experimenting to help right the ship for the next seven generations. 

One way the Tautrims make bigger projects happen is through grants. When Jesse Smith, the director of land stewardship at White Buffalo Land Trust, began pulling together a collabo – rative group to help bring native Western blue elderberries back to prominence through a USDA grant, Tautrim was one of his first calls. Smith sees Tautrim’s approach within the regenerative- agriculture community as unique and sketches him as “a multifaceted person. He stewards the land, but it’s not what defines him. He’s a surfer, skater, snowboarder, and obviously an amazing woodworker. From my perspective, that reflects how he tends the land, and it’s why there’s no other Orella Ranch.” When the elements come together, it produces a good meal. 

Like Salatin, the Tautrims sell their meat to a local cult following, rumored to include the likes of Brad Pitt, under the Gaviota Givings label. It’s not much of a moneymaker for the family. The US food-system policies largely incentivize the big producers to make low-quality, ecologically destructive meat, leaving it nearly impossible for small producers to survive. It frustrates Tautrim, but he remains committed because of the role the animals play in healthy land stewardship. Even Salatin describes himself as more of a “grass farmer.” 

Tautrim hands me a cold beer as we hop into a buggy for a ride up to the Lone Oak to catch a bird’s-eye view of the ranch. Unlike most oaks along these foothills, he says, this one stands alone, with massive, sprawling limbs that defy the arborist rule book. According to Tautrim’s great-aunt Elizabeth’s memoir, ships from the late 1700s used the iconic tree as a beacon to find Refugio Cove. 

Even though we’re racing the day’s remaining light, Tautrim’s pace is cruisy. The buggy bounces up the dirt switchbacks, a bit too close to the edge for my liking. Along the way, he points out sections where he’s done rewilding work on the land. 

The ridge across from us has less invasive mustard grass this year, which is a good sign. He shares how difficult it is to discern whether or not the change is a result of their work or just nature taking its course. Too many variables. Then he shows me a row of cypress trees and says confidently, “My kids will be able to harvest those in 50 years for lumber.” 

Soon enough, we’re at the Lone Oak. Just standing near the ancient tree, it becomes clear that it has more stories locked into its rings than will ever be told. Its location is also a damn fine place to take in the expanse of this wild coast and ponder the history of Orella. 

Obviously, the Chumash were here first. I imagine them moving in rhythms between their Refugio cliffside village, Qasil, and the sea, pulling shellfish from the reef and hopefully snagging a few thin-lipped gliders around the point in their tomol canoes. 

Though the Chumash’s numbers have been reviving slowly, they were decimated by disease and genocide from upward of 22,000 at pre-European contact to a couple thousand by the end of the Gold Rush. 

In the late 1700s, Captain Don José Francisco Ortega, the lead scout of the Alta California mission for the Spanish Royal Army, and the namesake of El Capitan State Park, was granted several thousand acres along the Gaviota Coast by the crown of Spain. The concession enabled his family to become fat cats off the booming hide and tallow trades. 

Tautrim’s great-great-great-grandfather, Don Bruno Orella, arrived in California from the Basque Country in 1853, ready to earn a living herding cattle. The Ortegas had been hit hard by a couple years of severe drought, which threw them into a financial tailspin and forced them to ditch most of their property at fire-sale prices. Bruno could not have had more impeccable timing. He’d recently married up into the prosperous Gonzales family, so he had access to cash and proceeded to scoop up around 5,000 coastal acres for less than three bucks per, which included the few hundred now known as Orella Ranch. 

To say it’s been smooth sailing since then wouldn’t be accurate. Tautrim’s great-great- grandmother, Josefa, was kidnapped and held hostage at gunpoint by bandidos, who eventually let her go in trade for a payment of fresh horses. In 1942, a couple months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese shelled the Ellwood oil field near Orella in an attempt to snuff out a pivotal American fuel source. Tautrim’s lineage spent sweltering and sweaty summer days cutting roads, harvesting lima beans with custom-tooled machinery, tapping water wells, and trying to keep the cattle fed. 

Tautrim wasn’t spared the ruggedness of ranch life either—his just arrived within the cultural context of the late 1980s. By elementary school, he was busy taking care of a steer and dealing with a rambunctious ram that would knock him on his ass. He doesn’t remember being issued a specific set of chores—it was just part of the family gig. 

Scanning the coast adjacent to the ranch, I grow envious of Tautrim’s gromhood playground. He got turned on to nature in elementary school, when teachers took him on excursions outside the classroom to teach him about local flora and fauna and the ways of the Chumash. 

Surfing took root early with Refugio across the street. He was down there all the time but quickly set sights on other gems in the region. Once he graduated to El Cap, weekend Hollister runs with classmates became the norm. A 6’5″ Progressive thruster, shaped by Dave Johnson, served him well at the time as he earned his way into the pecking order at local secret spots. When friends were old enough to drive, missions to Jalama began to scratch his exploration itch but mostly made it itchier. 

Tautrim first moved away from the ranch to go to school at Humboldt State. Initially, he studied forestry, until he realized the program was a feeder system for Big Lumber. Changing course, he sold his professors on a degree in sustainable ecological tourism with an emphasis on the Pacific Islands. Though Tautrim says he was never a ripper, he noticed that his time surfing the unruly, boil-ridden waves of Humboldt had taught him how to read the ocean. Enduring the fog zones of Gaviota and Humboldt during an era when surf mags were Pez-dispensing tropical candy, he built up a massive case of wanderlust and was beyond ready to exchange his year-round 4/3 for a pair of trunks.

*

Back at the house, Tautrim and I spend the evening sipping beers and squinting at slides through a loupe on a homemade light box as he recounts tales from his Ishi journals. 

At 10 a.m. on June 3, 1998, Buzz, Tautrim, and the rest of the crew set sail from the Ala Wai Harbor, bound for Brisbane by way of every nuking reef pass they could find. The first stop: Palmyra Atoll. 

When they made landfall, Tautrim and his shipmate Cary woke with the morning light to a glassy lagoon and loaded the dinghy like a SEAL team. The water color was that brilliant turquoise only atolls produce, with about a hundred feet of visibility. The dam of childhood visions built up busting ass on the ranch was about to burst. 

The left peeling across the reef was 6 foot, without a soul in sight. After a few hours spent dialing in the see-through reef spinners, Tautrim described his experience as “the most unreal day that I have been dreaming about for so many years.” 

The Ishi crew fell into a rhythm of island-hopping with fellow cruisers, the nickname given to sailors who apply the slow-is-fast ethos to their travels. A handful of Aussies, Kiwis, Pacific Islanders, and US mainlanders became just the right mix of navy and pirate. A kinship of the wild emerged as they shut down bars together, shared weather info, discussed maps and routing, helped each other troubleshoot repairs and local customs, and taught Tautrim how to make a mean fish curry. 

Of course, first they had to catch the fish. They once went 700 miles with only three bites, which also made off with their best lures. One afternoon, Tautrim grabbed his speargun and swam into deep water, landing a less-than-kill shot on a hefty jack. Within seconds, a black-tip reef shark circled the bleeding prey. Not being near the dinghy, Tautrim couldn’t get the wounded fish out of the water. 

“I had five to eight sharks circling me and trying to get my fish,” he says. Dragging the beast on the end of the line, he backpedaled his swim fins, “fending off sharks with my spear and knife, one in each hand, and struggling to keep the sharks away from my catch.” Tautrim has an embodied memory of the moment the alpha shark won the tussle. “It made a noise I’ll never forget….The sound of a shark’s powerful jaws crunching into the backbone of a nearby creature is a very humbling experience.” 

His journal is riddled with stories of narrowly escaping severe consequences. “This whole Pacific trip is to get me prepared to do this on my own,” he wrote. “The more stuff that goes wrong, the better. Sounds kind of funny, but it is the truth. The more experience I have to fall back on, the better off I am.” 

The pattern to his entries includes a sober recap of what happened, what went wrong, and the discussion with the crew about how to do it better next time. While his lack of experience, along with a healthy dose of young-buck ignoance, got him into these binds, a dash of wisdom helped him learn to survive and land a good feed. 

A sizable catch meant eating like royalty for a few days. Sashimi on the day of the catch went down easy, followed by fish curries the next. While adrift, Tautrim also learned to make sun- dried ahi jerky to stretch out their sustenance. The post-surf game changer was the Tahitian-style poisson cru bowls with fresh-caught ahi, velvety coconut milk, and big squeezes of lime juice. 

Much like his ancestor Bruno, Tautrim had uncanny timing, in his case with wave discovery. After sharing sessions with Vetea David and his brothers at a couple local spots around Papeete, Tautrim and a visiting friend decided to hitchhike to “the end of the road,” chasing a rumor. All they knew was that a woman named Gretta had a place to stay and there might be good waves in the area. They arrived soon after the 1998 Gotcha Pro Tahiti contest, but the footage hadn’t emerged yet, so they were blissfully ignorant about the brutal squareness of Teahupoo. 

During an evening session with 8- to 12- foot faces, Tautrim barely made the drop on his 7’2″. “My vivid memory is looking up, seeing the curtain of the wave backlit by the evening sun, and thinking, ‘Shit, this is a gnarly wave,’” he says. “Just then, the thing barfed, and out came me and a whole hell of a lot of spit.” 

“The more stuff that goes wrong, the better. The more experience I have to fall back on, the better off I am.”

On the flip side, while in Fiji, exploring the Tavarua area, Tautrim laid eyes on the best waves he’d ever seen, but it happened to be during the political shitstorm of surf privatization. He and Cary pulled up one day to sets pushing double overhead at a rifling left. There was only one guy out, but he paddled in as they were waxing up. Tautrim couldn’t believe their luck. 

“We were going to have this all to ourselves,” he says. Except after he snagged only a few bombs, they saw the reef-patrol boat beelining for them. Sure enough, they were sent packing to a lesser wave nearby that was crowded and too drained out to surf. Cary hadn’t even made a wave yet. Tautrim was fuming at the absurdity of letting flawless waves go unridden over politics. Rather than let it eat him up, it was water off a duck’s back. 

A piece of wisdom Tautrim gleaned from Captain Buzz was his sense of calm in heavy situations. He rarely got overheated when things went cockeyed, which on a boat was daily. Buzz did like his booze, though. The crew started relegating the captain to shorter shifts at the helm out of fear for their safety. 

One night, in Vanuatu, while typing away in his bunk, Tautrim heard a big splash. It could be only one thing: Buzz’s buzzed body falling into the drink. He had passed out while taking a leak and fallen overboard. His shipmate Tony quickly plunged in after him while Tautrim nabbed Buzz’s floating arm, yanking him back aboard. Tautrim’s reflection? “Two more seconds and he would have been dead.” 

As Ishi neared Brisbane, Buzz knew he wasn’t fit for the return. He told Tautrim as much, struck a new deal, and handed over the helm. Tautrim was free to recruit a new crew from home and take their sweet time getting back to Hawaii. Buzz would cover major repairs, and everything else was on the crew. Tautrim’s sailing skills were primed, and, now captain, he was happy to kick the can of a real job back home well beyond the horizon. There was more empty surf to be had, more primitive islands to visit, and so much more to be learned about the salty art of boat maintenance. 

Prior to setting off for the return voyage, in a prescient move, Tautrim asked his dad to bring him the book Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual, by Bill Mollison, when he came to visit in Australia. Back out to sea, he found himself rapt, studying the tome as if he was still in college, keen to start experimenting yesterday despite the lack of soil. Before long, he was “sailing the farm,” growing all kinds of sprouts in Ishi’s galley. Wheatgrass shots became the pre- surf ritual for a little energy boost. As they sailed through the stunning atolls of Micronesia, often escorted by dolphins slicing through the aquar- ium below the bow, Tautrim became enamored with native cultures.

The taro, turmeric, and pandan of Ontong Java animated his journal. A few gallons of petrol became fair trade with the village chief for a tour of their Indigenous gardens and local foodways. He was getting a chance to see his academic study of permaculture come to life, OG style. 

Around Marovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, he visited five different wood-carving villages, paying close attention to their craft. Inspired by their use of rosewood and nautilus inlay, he wrote, “Without a doubt, they are the best in the whole Pacific.” 

It’s clear from Tautrim’s log that he was yearning for more than a few thick tubes on this journey. After visiting a small island in Micronesia, he wrote, “In all my Pacific experiences, I must say that this is what it’s all about. A true island paradise with a culture not yet spoiled by all the Western crap that plagues our existence.” 

Each pristine island culture further crystallized Tautrim’s desire to combine his degree with his newfound island experiences, and with permaculture. Was it possible to find a remote island, shack up with Heidi, and start an ecotourism business? Maybe they could help the locals thwart the insatiable maw of capitalism and live in that elusive sweet spot of balance. Or was it just another paradise-drunk pipe dream of youth? Heidi had recently finished up a stint doing similar work for the Peace Corps on the electricity-free islands of Kiribati, so they figured they had a shot. 

Ishi’s engine eventually gave out 5 miles off Pohnpei, and two hours later they were being towed into Sokehs Harbor. After getting the boat into the capable hands of a mechanic for a full engine overhaul and a new crankshaft (Buzz kept his word and funded the repairs), Tautrim hit the cruiser bar for local intel.

As luck would have it, he quickly met a guy named Mike Sepos, who told him that there was an insane wave on the island. At that point, even for core surf travelers, the spot wasn’t on the maps. Sepos had been desperate for people to share waves with, and Tautrim was a willing mark. 

On the next swell, Sepos motored the two of them out to the spot in his Boston Whaler. Tautrim was awestruck. The waves were about 6 to 8 feet, with light offshore winds and twisting, open, massive barrels along the precision reef. “I shot 36 photos in one set, put down the camera, and paddled out,” Tautrim says. 

He spent the next month with Sepos, gorging on a series of swells, trading in tropical tube-pig gluttony at P-Pass. And it was about to get better, with Heidi en route to join up for the return passage after being apart for far too many moons. Once she was onboard, Tautrim was impressed with how she kept her cool at the helm during one of the nastiest squalls to date. But the easting leg of the voyage was becoming an eggy affair. 

One night, the crew hunkered in the cockpit for hours, drifting in the darkness, the sky punctuated by psychotic strobes from thunderbolts trying to sucker-punch Ishi from above. Time, brine, and violent squalls with gale-force winds split their aging sails like wet tissue paper. Days were spent sewing instead of surfing. 

By the time they reached Wallis Island, even their backup sails needed backups. They hatched a plan for Buzz to fly into Wallis with a new set and join them for the return to Hawaii. Even though Tautrim was stoked to see his old pal, Buzz’s health was dubious. He brought the wrong size sails, too. By this point, Tautrim had become a master troubleshooter, and he jury-rigged his way to readiness. Despite Buzz’s condition, they decided to pull anchor for Samoa and roll the dice. 

Upon arriving at Apia Harbor, Buzz blacked out and fell down the hatch, suffering a severe blow to the head. Tautrim and shipmate Robby were right there with him, but “he was unconscious for a solid five minutes,” Tatum says, and Buzz had to be medevacked to New Zealand for a brain scan. At that point, Heidi realized she’d had her fill and decided to return home. 

As Tautrim and the crew approached Palmyra Atoll, Buzz’s favorite place, they got word that their dear friend had passed away. Even though several other crew members opted out, Tautrim mustered a grief-filled spark of duty to see Ishi through to Oahu for Buzz. “What a long strange trip it had been,” Tautrim inked into his journal after limping into Ala Wai Harbor to no fanfare, filled with a potent mixture of grief and gratitude.

*

While Tautrim was at sea in 1999, the US Congress ordered a feasibility study to assess whether to turn the Gaviota Coast into a national seashore. Sounds nice, but locals saw it as governmental grift. Once he returned home, in 2000, Tautrim jumped into the fray to help rally the troops. Although the feds deemed the area “worthy for inclusion,” local opposition and political winds saw the project shelved. 

The skirmish helped land an epiphany for Tautrim. “There was no need to travel halfway around the world to see what I desired,” he says. “My paradise was right here, where I was born and raised. Orella Ranch and La Paloma Ranch before it were where I was brought up. My heritage of being a sixth-generation land steward on the Gaviota Coast was beginning to surface.” 

Around the same time, fellow surfer and rancher Chris Malloy fell into a friendship with Tautrim over a bootleg biodiesel project. “I was gravitating to guys like Guner, who had their fucking hands in the dirt,” Malloy recalls, painting Tautrim in the Ed Abbey archetype, adding that “he speaks plainly, isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers, and he’s got a little bit of that crazy eye.” 

As the two raised families over the years and pushed their boys into waves at Refugio, Malloy grew a deep respect for how Tautrim charts his own course. “He has a much broader perspective,” he says. “Guner thinks about this coastline in centuries, not election cycles. He doesn’t blather on about the latest eco-trend bullshit. He’s planting cover crops tomorrow.”

Since then, Tautrim has been doubly committed to doing right by both Orella and the Gaviota Coast. Beyond stewarding the ranch, he also sits on the board of directors for the Gaviota Coast Conservancy, a nonprofit that’s trying to keep this beautiful chunk of coast non-corpo and wild. 

Tautrim goes stoic when I probe about his favorite local waves. As with the islands in the South Pacific, he feels a duty to protect these sacred places. He had to earn his spot in these lineups, and he’s not about to abuse the trust built over decades. Shaper Wayne Rich, a longtime friend of the Tautrims, remembers the first time he met Tautrim in the lineup. “At first, he wasn’t sure if he liked me, but once he realized that I always surfed alone, and already had respect for his family being stewards of Orella Ranch for generations, we never had a problem,” he says. “I love surfing with him.” 

Knowing that Tautrim would never flex his own surf chops, I ask Rich for his take. “I remember rolling up to a particular spot one day, which we probably shouldn’t name, and he got this incredible backside tube ride that was so thick and honing,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘He’s got the place wired. He’s grown up here.’” 

One afternoon, we sit on the front porch as Tautrim details the intricacies of the passive-solar design he used to build his house. As if setting course on Ishi, he recites the latitude used to calculate the placement for the eaves of the roof. 

His cob design, infused with nautical intel- ligence, allows for winter sun to heat the house, but keeps it cool in the summer. As we move our gaze off the front porch, Tautrim explains the permaculture concept of guilds.

Eight feet toward the ocean grows a jacaranda tree, anchoring a guild. This species of tree was chosen to allow sunlight into the house in the winter, when it isn’t flowering, gifting more free heat. Its milky-purple summer flowers cast much-needed shade on scorching days, for both the house and the dragon fruit, which climbs the jacaranda and makes for tasty smoothies. The rock purslane enshrouding the base of the tree keeps the nearby grass at bay, making a perfect green mulch and attracting pollinators. It’s a tight little ecosystem. 

Tautrim points out a series of guilds spread around the homestead, and I get an overwhelming sense of being immersed in a chain of islands. This is when it hits me that Tautrim is cruising Orella. He took everything he loved about the South Pacific, and about his way of life as a cruiser on Ishi, back home so he could bring it to life on land.

*

The next morning, we hop in the buggy and pass through the homestead of Mark Tautrim, Guner’s dad, who represents the fifth generation of Orella and lives a quarter klick west of Tautrim and Heidi on the ranch. We end up in the woodlot, a football-field-size pasture strewn with Goliath logs of Monterey cypress, redwood, and, Tautrim’s favorite, black acacia. They look like dead bodies waiting to be buried as sheep weave through them, thinning the coastal scrub. 

The woodlot is where Tautrim deftly mills the reclaimed logs through the teeth of the TimberKing and the Lucas Mill, initiating the transition to their next life as artwork. Given the poor economics of the pasture-raised-meat operation, Tautrim earns additional scratch via artisan woodworking with reclaimed materials under the Seaborn Designs moniker. 

Much like a day on Ishi, a day on the ranch is guided by a mixture of desire and necessity. Today’s project entails laying down an epoxy coating on some “redwood cookies,” cross-sectional cuts that expose the tree’s intricate ring patterns, in Tautrim’s woodshop. The wood was reclaimed from Santa Barbara City College and will go back to the campus as beautiful tables for students. 

Walking into the rusty aluminum-sided structure, I’m transported back to middle school woodshop. Among the array of tools and machinery you’d expect to see, old surf posters hang behind sawdust-laced cobwebs. A framed black-and-white sketch of Jerry Garcia takes watch over the space, along with a blown-up print of P-Pass that serves as a reminder of Tautrim’s time on Ishi. He looks like a master glasser as he moves calmly from cookie to cookie, pouring and spreading the epoxy, listening to a podcast, and torching bubbles out of the coat. “Guner is an incredible craftsman and has a unique style in his woodworking,” says Rich.

His output is a far cry from assembling mass-produced, toxic melamine cabinets, which is where he started. One day, during a project for the El Capitan campground, a friend offered Tautrim some free pine recently felled on his property. Tautrim put it to use for the project and loved how each log, once opened, spoke to him with one-of-a-kind shapes and patterns. He never looked back, and some of those pieces are still holding it down at the campground.

When I ask Tautrim what threatens keeping Orella in the family, he doesn’t flinch. “Succession,” he says. “When people die, that’s when shit goes sideways.” At many points during the ranch’s history, family members have had to sell off plots at the time of inheritance because they couldn’t afford the tax burden that came with the keys.

Add to that the never-sated hunger of developers, who would love to sink their dozers into Orella and build a resort. And, just to keep it interesting, climate change has turned wildfire season into a year-round threat to the area. Then there’s the work. 

The everyday to-do list of the ranch means feeding and moving animals, pulling weeds, making compost, and wrenching on rusty tractors or sawmills. Malloy points out that Tautrim couldn’t do all this without his partner. “A lot of credit goes to Heidi, man. She’s like, ‘Okay, let’s do it,’” he says. “She’s also the sweetest, most humble person that you’ll ever meet.” 

Their sons, Kai and Sequoia, are next in line, and I’m curious how the boys will handle. Sequoia, Tautrim’s eldest, pulls up in his truck. He says a quick hello and heads straight for the ramp to throw down a clinic on frontside rock ’n’ rolls. He’s home for a quick break from his job teaching outdoor skills to kids up in Mount Shasta. 

Kai recently became a state lifeguard with Lucas Malloy, Chris’ son, and has started keeping watch over Gaviota. I head over to his shaping bay above the woodshop to watch him mow some foam. He’s in high school and has been shaping under the tutelage of Rich for the last couple years. Rich noticed early on how Kai’s ranch upbringing came with a sixth sense around heavy machinery. “When I put the planer in Kai’s hand for the first time, I could tell I could trust him,” he says. Kai’s focus is intense as he cautiously planes away thin layers from a blank. 

Like their dad, Kai and Sequoia have grown up embedded in nature, surfing and spearing the local haunts. It occurs to me that while I was visiting, they never once got out a phone to avoid conversation, and they looked me straight in the eyes when they spoke. 

Tautrim’s dad swings by in the buggy to pick us up for an afternoon cruise to the Lone Oak. As I chat with Mark, I sense a deep pride in how Tautrim stewards the ranch and his family. 

When I ask Kai and Sequoia if they can imagine themselves on Orella 50 years from now, they don’t skip a beat. They both express a steadfast desire, as if it’s predestined. Then Kai chimes in with a thought: “But I’ll probably travel for a while first.”