After almost half a decade of documentation, comes THE LAKE SURFERS, one of the first books dedicated to the sport of lake surfing.
I first heard of “The county” during the early years of the pandemic, while taking a photojournalism class one town over.
“Oh, The County—there’s lots going on down there,” said my writing professor when I brought up the idea of documenting lake surfers for an assignment.
That offhand comment would end up defining the next few years of my life. Not long after, I was living there—in a van, parked outside a tiny surf shop on the bottom floor of an old brick house.
The summer was hot and sticky. Mosquitoes would fill my van every night, and my shoulder-length hair smelled like wet dog from the e coli and algae-filled lake I used as a bath—unless I could borrow the shower above my favorite restaurant across the street.
I'm not sure I knew what kept me there in those days, but it felt like there was a task to accomplish—a niche experience to explore and capture.
I'm not great with numbers, but I’d guess there are much fewer than 1,000 lake surfers in the world. Out of the thirty-five million who consider themselves surfers, surfing here may be one of the last frontiers.
It’s not easy. The freshwater freezes, coating you and your board in ice. The wind howls through you to the nerve. The waves are hard to find, harder to predict, and harder still to paddle into. Even on a good day, it might be what most ocean surfers would call a “pub day.”
But it’s the lake surfer who lives for those hard-fought moments when everything lines up just right—to deliver those perfect golden nuggets called waves. For a brief moment, they lock human to tool to nature in a way that no other activity can.
This book is an accumulation of years of frigid mornings, mosquito-bitten nights, hard lessons, easy friends, and lake surfing.