Lairds Landing

Lairds Landing
2 miles
1 hour
Start: Marshall Beach Parking Lot
End: Marshall Beach Parking Lot
Includes: Lairds Landing Trail, Lairds Landing

Hike 6
January 25, 2013
Six-of-Swords
Progress

There comes a time in any project where you just have to move-on. You have begun the thing, collected yourself, jettisoned what you do not want and, now, need to move forward. This is the essences of the six-of-swords.

Last week, with the five-of-swords, I grappled with my fear of cows. Although I had overcome the fear enough to continue my walk, I still felt uneasy. I knew this leg of the journey had about a mile of open cow-territory.

I ran into one of the long-time, local ranchers at Vladimir's in Inverness on Pub Night a few days before this walk. I asked him for insight into cow psychology. He said cows are not usually trouble, unless they have babies. "It's the bulls you have to worry about."

"Don't you usually keep the bulls separately?" I asked, thinking I already knew the answer. "It just depends." He said and launched into a medley of stories themed around rancher-bull relations, highlighted by his own poignant tales of bull-tussling.

To cut to the chase, I asked if there were any bulls openly pastured on the stretch of road I was slated to walk. "Not likely." He said in a non-committal way, which did nothing to ease my mind. He said the best thing to do was ask ahead of time.

I said it was unclear who to ask and his companion suggested that that was a park service issue. Interesting. This hinted at the complex relationship between the ranchers and the park.

Being now even more uneasy, I decided to throw all my swords (thoughts) in the car and just move-on. I drove the questionable stretch of road and parked in the cow-free zone at the trail head. I walked right, instead of left, and slipped down the less marked road to Lairds Landing.

The day was warm, about sixty-five degrees. I was alone and enjoying nature's palette of greens, blues and whites.

The landscapes became increasingly more interesting as I got towards Lairds Landing.

For a hundred years, Lairds Landing was a settlement for Miwok ranch-workers and was later occupied by the artist Clayton Lewis.

The exotic plants and abandoned buildings appear in a state of naturalization.

This process is aided by an exotic species of taggers who survive partially on canned beer drunk out of paper bags. I did not see them, only evidence of their activities.

The question of trash takes an interesting turn. Is all of it trash? It is so beautiful down by the shores of Tomales Bay; the hamlet has a mystical quality, like a pool of peace-loving idealism: the surrounding wood occupied not by leprechauns or fairies, but by spirits of hippies, artists and poets living out an alternative American dream.

The park service operates like the six-of-swords; a passel of ideals, rules, precedent and regulations thrown in a boat and pushed forward in order for the organization to make any progress.

I think it might be time for the park service to unpack their boat and see what, exactly, is in there. When I say the park service, I mean us. The park service exists because and on behalf of the American people who fund it.

This is the official park service mission statement:

"The mission of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is to conserve the scenery, the natural and historic objects, and the wildlife in United States' national parks, and to provide for the public's enjoyment of these features in a manner that will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

The wording of the mission statement makes ecological preservation sound like an enjoyable pastime. This is problematic when confronting the serious problems of our times.

At this point, the park service exists as our attempt to save ourselves from ourselves. As humans, we think preservation of these open spaces will preserve enough of our environment to counterbalance the effects of trashing the rest of the planet through our thoughtless use of natural resources in the production of goods.

What we need is to adopt a standard operating procedure for all of our lands which incorporates the well-being of all wildlife as the bottom line. We are wildlife; we depend on the health of the ecosystem as much as any other creature.

If we unpack our boats, we will find conflicting ideologies that lead to unclear communications between park service and its constituents. We must know what we want to do with cows and old artist enclaves before we can effectively direct the agency we employ to carry-out our wishes.

In the case of Laird's Landing, a group of people show-up periodically to teach an old way of netting fish used by the artist Clayton Lewis, who lived there for the last thirty years of his life. You can find the nets stored in an old boathouse near the water.

An effort to establish an ongoing artist enclave was stalled by the problem of money. Does it make sense to use the American people's hard-earned money to create and preserve an artist enclave that will be used by a few people, when we have huge ecological problems?

I think it makes sense to allow people to live in the existing buildings and teach them the art of living in balance with nature. The site can be preserved and revitalized by teaching the skills necessary for living sustainably in the future. Let's use the park lands as laboratories and education centers to reeducate ourselves on how to live in balance on all of our lands.

As it is, the National Parks are treated like objects left collecting dust while we search for adequate funds to hire staff for their upkeep. We are the staff. It is our land and our responsibility. We must decide how we want to interact with all of our lands; let's let the precious pieces of preserved parkland remind us of what is possible. Let's make them examples our future, not of our past.