Drakes Head Trail

Drakes Head
Trail8.8 miles
5 hours
Start: Estero Trailhead
End: Estero Trailhead
Includes: Estero Trail, Drakes Head Trail

Hike 23
May 17, 2013
Nine of Cups
Confidence

The nine of cups shows a guy sitting and smiling with his arms folded, surrounded by upright cups. He is confident the cups (others) have his back.

With this card in mind, I set out on a nine-mile hike to Drakes Head Trail with my friends Melinda, Lori and Carol. We all brought cars, in case my companions decided to turn back early.

Lori loves dead things and early-on presented us with a beetle carcass to inspect. He was whole except for the big hole in his back. This sparked a philosophical discussion about what it means to be dead.

Carol pulled out the air parentheses when saying "dead" so as not to offend the beetle who may or may not have been dead from his own perspective.

A fuchsia pea-flower appeared to be on steroids. Carol described it as an Eighties flower. Do a Google, image search for "eighties fuchsia" if you don't get what she means.

We discussed the oyster racks which not everyone had seen.

Cows rested by the lone eucalyptus. We stopped for bubbly water and trail mix proffered from Lori's elegant jute bag. We snacked, talked and Carol announced it was time for her to head back. Melinda had already peeled-off.

Lori looked resolute. We continued past the Sunset Trail sign, turned our backs to the Estero and into new territory. It was pastureland.

We waded through many cows and followed the Drakes Head Trail to the bluff.

Ahead and to the left, the waters of Limantour Estero lay between us and the spit. To the right we could see the mouth of Drakes Estero. The Pacific rested just beyond.

We enjoyed the wind and feeling we were the only people who had ever seen this. Our nine-mile trek was well rewarded.

We headed out of the wind and got a little sidetracked in the pasture. Cows eyed us incredulously, stood ankle-deep in the irrigation pond and nestled down in circular beds of purple Douglas Iris.

Lori recounted tales of her last 30 years as a wine broker in LA. She is now retired in a cozy cabin with time to enjoy friends, nature, art, cooking and the evolving nature of dead things.

Returning to the parking lot, we were both happy and feeling slightly victorious.

I'm having trouble writing about the cards these days, because my journey is to become more appropriate to the moment. This means stripping away anything superfluous and being free to respond to the time and place of the present moment.

When I am writing about a walk I am reliving the experience. By putting it on paper I am documenting the ephemeral experience with words and pictures. This helps me organize and remember my experience.

Writing about the theme of the tarot card is a separate process. It is the discipline of taking a concept presented within a system and applying it to the present moment. Like when your teacher gives you a theme for a poem. She has a curriculum to follow which is related to you only through your participation in her class.

A good teacher will let you say what needs to be said even if its off-theme. The question is, would she then request you to do a poem with the assigned theme?

We respond to stimuli which arise from within and stimuli which arise from without. Our internal stimuli are informed by our external stimuli, meaning what we learn, or take in, gives us a framework and language to express what we feel.

I am currently working through the riddle of how to stay appropriate to the moment and continue to develop knowledge and expertise. It strikes me sticking with an organic process is most fruitful.

This highlights learning methods. One method teaches you concepts from someone else's curriculum. A second method teaches you from your own curriculum, a third teaches from the curriculum of the moment.

The curriculum of the moment offers Lori's interest in watching death take its course in the decomposition of organic matter. I am inspired to understand more what this means to her and the particular sources of satisfaction. This strikes me as worth knowing, because it offers tangible lessons in one of our most basic mysteries.

My curriculum has me considering the theme of confidence in my relationship with others.

The tarot is someone else’s curriculum. I made it my own by choosing to incorporate it into my hiking project.

A music metaphor comes to mind. A novice musician learns her first songs from someone else's curriculum. These are songs written by other people and perhaps assigned by a teacher.

Later, she might develop her own curriculum by writing songs. These are more personal and stem from experience. They are based on skills she learned from others.

True expertise and flow, finally, are demonstrated in the curriculum of the moment. This is an improvisational jam created in the present moment with others. It takes a good deal of nuts and bolts musicianship to do this effectively.

The skills I am developing in my curriculum are awareness and appropriate action in the present. All awareness is ultimately self-awareness, because we become aware of the world through our interaction with it. If there were no us, there would be no awareness.

So this brings me to my curriculum's current theme of confidence. I am confident, like the beetle,  I will die. What will happen to me after I die? I don't know. I'm going to ask Lori; I'm confident she'll know or, at least, she'll be interested to find out.