Pablo Point Trail

Pablo Point Trail
6.7 miles
5 hours
Start: Ridge Trailhead
End: Olema Valley Trailhead
Includes: Ridge Trail, Teixeira Trail, Pablo Point Trail, Olema Valley Trail

Hike 44
October 25, 2013
Five of Pentacles
Poverty

Piro and I started this walk at Ridge Trailhead. We were close enough to Bolinas to get beautiful ocean views as we took the trail north.

Then we were on the gorgeous stretch of flat ridge which starts around Teixeira Trail.

As Piro and I parted, I noticed she was color-coordinated with the forest. Perhaps picture-taking was exerting a certain pressure on clothing choice. She gave me a school-girl wave and headed back to her car at the trailhead.

Tender huckleberry stood against aged fir.

The beauty of the forest enveloped me. In the absence of our human conversation, the voice of the forest filled me. It spoke of beauty and belonging. It held me. My heart opened, longing and fulfillment equally present.

I headed down Teixeira Trail to Pablo Point. Pablo Point Trail is an overgrown, one-mile stretch through small, scraggly fir competing for sunlight.

Pablo Point itself  is a grassy opening surrounded by trees which now obscure the view.

I sat for awhile in a resident oak. The voice of this place was different, mixed with the sound of human striving and marked by evidence of its powers of destruction.

Nature continues life in her way, but we must not take advantage of her magnanimity for it is us who are left walking in the field of Gaia's broken dream, trying to find ourselves and realizing never again will we be whole.

As I headed to the Olema valley, nature displayed her fall ornaments of red berries and straw-colored remnants of thistle.

The valley opened in a soothing pallet of life on its way to winter rest: yellow, green, beige and rusty orange.

Coyote brush resembled wispy cotton from a distance only to be revealed as festoons of  tiny wishies!

And then I was at my car at Olema Valley Trailhead, the drama of this trail now interwoven in my story.

The five of pentacles shows a man and woman shuffling through the cold snow. A stain glass window of pentacles shines above their heads. This is an image of poverty for those who do not have the eyes to see hope waiting.

An impoverished frame of minds leads us to suffering. We continue in our our debilitated state, rather than pausing to get a new point of view. If we pause and look around, we will see that fulfillment of our deepest longings is here shining through the gloom.