Tomales Point Trail

Yesterday I ventured back out the Point Reyes Peninsula to the Tomales Point Trail, a 9.5 mile long round trip hike to the extreme northern tip of Point Reyes. I had a teaser visit to this area of Point Reyes in mid-March, when I chose to visit nearby McClure's Beach. I knew that tackling Tomales Point would be more of an epic affair. I also felt embarrassed as I struggled to make the time to visit the trail. Suddenly, an opportunity arose when I received an assignment for my "Wilderness Rites of Passage" course with its upcoming trip to the Mojave Desert. What better location would there be to take a solo hike than going back out to Tomales Point?

I was certainly not disappointed, though I may have not realized the epic scope of the trip. In fact, one of the more surprising elements of my hike was how the "out" and "back" segments felt like two different trips. The culprit was ostensibly the heavy fog that enveloped the point on my way out. Whereas when I returned, the fog had vanished and the surroundings took on a completely different feel and flavoring. I quickly realized that I had taken little to no notice of certain features of the landscape. The return trip also played with my expectations, where I anticipated the return trip would feel shorter... but it did not. Ultimately both segments of the walk took exactly the same length of time: two hours. I felt that time ceased to matter out there at the tip of Tomales Point. I was shocked to find that my cellphone had service, and expressed the sentiment in a brief perfect 140 character text tweet:

Cant believe I have cellphone service here on the northern tip of Point Reyes (Tomales Point) after hiking for 2 hours.

I actually came to regret pulling out the cellphone, which I had carefully kept off on the way out. It made me rely on it much more for the time and to see what was going on as I returned to the parking area. In an odd though probably symbolic coincidence, the professor of the Wilderness course called me while I was driving away from the Point.

The focus of the hike was encouraged to be about noticing one's own personal process, and seeing how that affected a physical activity while one also chose to fast during the hike. I found fasting to be surprisingly easy and all about the INTENTION. Being comfortable with my own thought process and place in the world is another matter, and a worthy focus for the vision quest.