Hearts Desire Beach

Hearts Desire Beach
2.5 miles
1.50 hours
Start: Pierce Point Road
End: Pierce Point Road
Includes: Hearts Desire Road, Hearts Desire Beach, Jepson Trail

Hike 8
February 10, 2013
Eight-of-Swords
Conditioning

The eight-of-swords shows a woman bound and blind-folded, standing in a puddle of water surrounded by swords. A key thing to notice in this card is that her legs are not bound; she is free to leave at any time.

This card represents our conditioned responses. Conditioned responses are useful for interacting with ourselves and the world, if they are serving our needs. They allow us to respond without having to question everything we do before we do it. It becomes necessary to question our conditioned responses when we do not obtain our desired outcomes.

This is the case for the woman in the card. She has bound herself up with her own thinking and is now left standing in a puddle of futility.

I contemplated this card on my trek to Hearts Desire Beach in Tomales Bay State Park. I walked down the road, which probably very few people do, since there is a trail. The terrain was exciting. The oaks were huge and the ferns lush.

Sapsuckers worked busily in a forested sanctuary.

Trees stood in architectural silhouette against the brilliant blue sky.

Spring was staging a soft opening with adorable forget-me-nots, pale ceanothus and startling red toyon berries. Birdsong buzzed and twittered on all sides.

Hearts Desire Beach is the main beach for visitors to Tomales Bay State Park. If you drive in, you must pay $8.00 per car. There is a small parking lot right next to the beach and another larger one down the way.

A group of seven or so people picnicked at the tables, savory smells emitting from their barbecue and camp stove. Another group had hauled kayaks ashore and sat reminiscing about previous adventures.

Two deer thrilled a photographer by walking across the beach and lingering near the restroom. I sat at a picnic bench on the beach, ate a tangerine and headed up the Johnstone trail to the group picnic area.

What a surprise! This is one of the most beautiful picnic areas I've seen. The views of Tomales Bay are stunning. After some exploring, I found Jepson Trail across the parking lot. It would complete my loop back to Pierce Point Road where my car was parked.

On the trail, I stopped to take pictures of a fallen tree crossing the trail. It looked to me like an alligator’s eye and I wished my boy was with me so I could show him. As I took the picture, a twenty-something couple came up behind me.

I stepped out of the way so they could pass. The young woman went first. She was carrying a banana peel. As she moved toward the log, she looked around asking no one in particular "Just throw it?" She hurriedly removed the little sticker from the peel, looked at it and laid the peel on the log.

She slipped trying to step onto the log and turned to go butt first saying to herself "over a wet log." She awkwardly shimmied, crotch forward, in her stretchy, black, exercise pants as her gentleman friend and I stood waiting.

After long moments, the young man tentatively stepped forward saying "Can I help you?" Through a tight smile, in a high voice she said, "That's okay." The squirming continued. Time passed. I shuffled, looked away and, finally, she was over. I hoped this was not their first date.

He followed easily and I noticed the banana peel was gone.

Here are a few possible conditioned responses to consider in this vignette:

1) Ladies go first. To be chivalrous in the face of a potential hazard, perhaps, the man should go first, assess the difficulty, and then help the lady.

2) Ladies are strong, independent equals. This message is in direct conflict with conditioning message number one. This might explain why he was so slow in offering help and why she refused.

3) Food scraps are not trash, but stickers are. This may be standard operating procedure in suburbs and cities, but parks operate under a leave-no-trace procedure. You pack it in, you pack it out.

Conditioning is fine, as long as we are getting desired results. If we are not, we must revise our standard operating procedure.

In the case of this young woman, she recognized her conditioned response to littering would not yield the desired results in a national park. I could see her in the process of revising her trash paradigm. Absence of the peel indicates she made a successful revision.

Hopefully it will become the new paradigm in all future banana-peel situations. This is an example of how experience in nature helps us positively change to more earth-friendly paradigms.

In the case of the young man, all I can do is wish him good luck in developing a successful standard operating procedure for his relationships with women.

So, if we find ourselves unhappy about the way things are turning out, it is time to revise our procedures. First, we must become aware of our unhappiness. Second, we must define what led to it. Third, we must define our desired outcome. Fourth, we must implement action which is likely to yield the desired result.

The good news is, we don't have to question everything, only the outcomes we want to change.