Shell Beach

Shell Beach
4.5 miles
3 hours
Start: Hearts Desire Beach Parking Lot
End: Shell Beach Parking Lot
Includes: Hearts Desire Beach, Johnstone Trail, Pebble Beach, Shell Beach II, Shell Beach I

Hike 9
February 15, 2013
Nine-of-Swords
Despair

Despair is the loss of hope. When we lose hope, we can no longer look to the future; it is too painful. The nine-of-swords shows a woman sitting up in bed with her face in her hands. The swords above her, which represent thoughts, are pointed forward. She cannot face the future.

When we get caught in despair we get caught in the endless cycle of the status quo. We get fixated on what is wrong and cannot imagine a different outcome. The number nine represents cycles in that it always returns to itself. For example: 9 x 4 = 36 and 3 + 6 = 9. This works for any number multiplied by nine.

For this reason the nine represents a completion in itself. In the case of despair, hopeless thoughts lead to hopeless action, which result in more of the outcome that originally caused the despair. It is an endless cycle.

With this card in mind I set-off on the Fool's Journey to Shell Beach. My friends Melinda and Carol joined me. We parked at Hearts Desire Beach and headed south on Johnstone Trail.

Prior to this, I had done most of my walking alone. Swords and winter are perfect for solitary reflection. Spring, however, sent a sweet breath our way and it brought the three of us together on a beautiful day.

There was a dedication at the head of the trail to Bruce and Elsie Johnstone who, through their imagination, helped bring the park into being. Imagination helped create the park we were walking in!

We headed through the beautiful group picnic area and onto the trail. We chatted a bit, noting how happy we were to be on the trail, until the beauty of the oak forest stunned us into silence. We did not want to miss our chance to be changed by it: soothed and inspired.

Melinda knows a lot about the local plants, so I took the opportunity to ask about ones unknown to me. We found exotic holly celebrating Christmas on the trail.

Melinda pointed-out a trillium plant, and I immediately thought of Star Trek. Remember Spock posed as a trillium trader? The show led us to believe trillium is a mineral, but a Star Trek book has Spock rightly describing it as "a medicinal plant of the lily family."

We decided to take the very short trail to Pebble Beach. It is wonderful to emerge from the shadowy green of the forest onto the sun-drenched, elegant beige and blue of the beach. I let out a cry of delight at the sight of it.

After a brief interlude, we headed further up the Johnstone trail. The trail was boggy for awhile. We walked the tippy wood planks to keep out shoes dry.

We admired the smooth, pumpkin-colored limbs of the madrone, the spicy-smelling stalks of labrador tea and the newly unfurling fiddlehead ferns, which are edible; though, I would not have the heart to snuff the tender buds so full of potential!

We got to the top of the hill, near to Pierce Point road and headed down to Shell Beach. This part of the trail is familiar to us all, since it is practically in our back yards. A need to rest sends my friends on the short-cut back home, while I continue on to the beach.

Imagination is the opposite of despair. If we can imagine something, we are looking ahead. In despair, we lose hope and are afraid to look ahead. Nature reminds me that hope is natural. Like the fiddlehead fern, we are planted by the cosmic imagination, we unfurl and reach to express our unique potential. We do not imagine the universe, it imagines us.

Our purpose is to express our awesome potential. Thus far, as humans, we have created some mess, but that was out of immaturity and naïveté. We are in a constant state of evolution like the rest of life around us. We have the capacity to adapt our behavior to maintain an environment where we can flourish.

Carol shows her connection to our common source and her love of life by expressing her desire to provide healthy food for others. Her catering business is not just a job, but a work of art. She is using her life energy to express her deepest wish for love and health on the planet through the food she provides for dinner parties and weddings.

This means she is creating the world according to her vision of love and health. It puts her clients, and the rest of us, in good hands.

Melinda lives in awareness of our kinship with the common source. We all spring from and share the body of the world. Communing with plants, understanding their properties and using them to help others heal is a way she translates the expressed potential of the universal imagination into human terms and makes it accessible to the rest of us.

None of us exists in spite of the planet; we are sprung from the imagination and the body of the world. Yes, we are the world. This means we have little need for despair. A walk in nature reminds us of the immense potential we embody. When we open ourselves as conduits of the universal imagination, anything is possible.

As humans, we are imbued with potential and we are well equipped to express it to the benefit of all life.

Despair exists only when we forget our potential. Let us take our hands from our eyes and face the future. Solutions to our problems are waiting to be discovered; we need to open our eyes to see them.

Shell beach is a hidden jewel. It is my happy place. It is mostly empty, except when you would expect otherwise. It is where my son is learning to swim and where I go to stare at the sky. It waits as a quiet retreat and a refreshing dip in the bay.

Wherever you are, I hope you find your own happy place. If one does not exist, work to create one. With what nature provides, it is clear that if we have the eyes to see it, we have the potential to live in heaven on earth.