SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — On a weekday evening in mid-October, 18-year-old Caroline Marks is padding barefoot along the volleyball-size stones at Lower Trestles in south Orange County, a renowned surf spot not far from her house. There is no one else in the water. The sky looks like spilled orange paint. The pandemic and other human concerns don’t reach this secluded beach, but Marks and her five-foot plank of foam and fiberglass come here every day to hone her craft of carving waves better, at a younger age than any woman in history.
Into the roaring surf she paddles, the model of a new American archetype: the little sister of brawny brothers she quickly surpassed in athletic prowess if not in physical size.