Follow Your Heart, Not the Map

Technology has its advantages. But if you rely it on too heavily, you may find it has some major pitfalls too.

I have been hiking for years long before I had a smartphone; I had a stupid phone and a paper map. It served me well. I never cared how many miles I went, how long it would take to get anywhere, or what to expect. I walked to walk and I knew I was off course when I had a little feeling in my gut telling me I wasn’t where I should be.

Now I have my GPS-tracker app on the moment I park the truck. I look at the app rather than my surroundings to find to the trailhead. While sometimes it comes in handy, I really need to stop relying on it.

Arriving into the first parking lot I see, I realize I’ve been here before—but I had done the hike from the other end. And it wasn’t really a hike. Devil’s Slide is a paved path, and a while back my friend Carolina and I had started at the bottom and turned around here at the top. The app said I was in the right place, so I surmised that maybe Pedro’s Point, the trail I was here to take, was an offshoot of this one.

Tucker and I headed toward the trailhead for Devil’s Slide. I didn’t see any smaller trails, but from what I read it was a dirt path—and this was not a dirt path. My GPS wasn’t giving me any warning that I was off path, so we kept walking. And honestly, it's not like the view was terrible or anything.

One mile later, after descending a good portion of the “slide,” that little gut instinct told me we were completely off course. We should have hit the trail as described by now. I looked down at my phone, and noticed that the red dot indicating Me had not moved. “No Service” was in the upper left of the phone.

We were walking in the wrong direction. And this mountain filled with abandoned artillery was blocking my cell phone reception.​ We walked back up the hill, I refreshed the app, and boom, there I was, a mile away from the trailhead. We had walked in the exact opposite direction of the trail.

So, uphill we climbed, back to the truck and I wondered where the trail might be. There was a road—Highway 1—right there, which is why I hadn't looked in that direction before.  We walked to the end of the drive, turned left at the road, and there, just a a few yards away was a little tiny sign announcing the entrance to Pedro Point Headlands.

Annoyed that my gut instinct took so long to kick in, but proud that it was still there, our feet hit earth after two miles of walking a different, paved path.
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Arriving at what seemed like it could be a parking lot one day, we chose one of the four trails leading out. I consulted my app again, this time not fully trusting it, and chose the one my gut was telling me was the right path. It led through a Eucalyptus grove.

​And through probably what was once a riverbed that drained to the sea. Steep walls of meadow lined one side and a trees rose up from the other side.

I recalled some description of views and took a path I suspected might take us to one of the vista points. The map at the trailhead didn’t have quite so many paths that were on the ground, so I chose one and traveled along the narrow path etched through high meadow.

When we came to the path’s natural end, it turned out nature was thriving so much, there was little expanse to see. So we turned around and hiked back to the main trail.

Out across the ridge line, there was a mountain with two people walking a trail. I thought, “I wonder how you get there?” and looked down at where I was. I couldn’t see where the path was connected due to the rolling hills, and thought there was no way we would ever walk that far.

I was wrong.
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Tucker and I paused a moment on the peak I thought would be our turnaround spot. Sitting on a rock for a moment, Tucker even took a load off to stare off into the mountains to the southeast of us.

After a sufficient break, I rose up and we continued up and down a couple less steep valleys and peaks. It wasn’t as long as I suspected, and as we crested the final peak that would show us the direct line to that final mountain, those two people I had seen in the distance were now huffing and puffing their way back up the peak I stood on.

When the man caught his breath, I asked (while maintaining my social distance), “Is it worth it?”

He looked back at the mountain and his female companion who had taken a moment to stare at her shoes and get some more oxygen about half way up the steep incline, and smiled ever so slightly, “Oh, yeah, definitely.”

So Tucker and I headed downhill once more, and then straight back up again.

The hiker was right.
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Looking north, we saw the almost abandoned beach and town.

​To the south was Devil’s Slide—where we had been a couple hours earlier—and the sea beyond.

​There seemed to be another path along the ridge line that went out to the ocean, as if we would be riding the spine of a dragon’s tail. But when I considered that we’d have to go downhill again to go back uphill… my body rejected the idea. There was no certainty we’d get there anyway.

​We took in the view in each direction one more time. To the north.

​And to the south.

And then headed back down to go back up to continue along the ridge that bordered the sea.

​Wildflowers added dots of color to the green and brown cliffside.

And trees of mystical arrangement held sentinel.

​From ocean...

To mountains...

​We saw it all along the journey.

​When I got back to the trailhead, I took a photo of the map. It’s the symbol of this trek itself: you need to look beyond the map. While this was supposed to be just be a map of where we journeyed, it’s actually reflection of who I am… amongst the trees that hug the sea and the mountains beyond.

​I have always felt at home here in the Bay Area. The land and sea sing in harmony with my soul. Perhaps it’s because I am a part of it as much as it is a part of me. Whether it’s in the woods, along the bluff, or just gazing out at the tip of the dragon’s tail, this is where my heart belongs.