This past week, for three days, I went camping in the Negev Desert of Israel. Amy and I figured out logistics like food and gear and everything and then Shoshana and Judith decided to join us for the trip. We had to take two buses to get there, from Tel Aviv and then Beersheva. Looking out the window in Beersheva, I saw this amazing shuk (market) in which, apparantly, there is an unbelievable Bedouin market with hand made pieces by older Bedouin women who still live the traditional livestyle in tents and caves in the desert making all the pieces by hand and selling them in this market. According to what I have read, younger generations of Bedouin women are not interested in this lifestyle anymore so I am very interested in going to the market and experiencing it. I have had wonderful experiences with Bedouin people who I have met so far on my trip. They are very warm and welcoming and excited to talk to anyone. THe culture is very peaceful, with delicious tea and coffee sitting around a fire with the beat of music made from using a unique wooden coffee grinder in the silence of the desert.
In any event, the Negev desert is a beautiful, unique place that can only be described as inspiring. There were many instances that made me feel this unbelievable power in the desert, a loneliness that I have never felt before and a questioning of whether coincidences are actually only that, and nothing more. It also made me realize why Moses saw G-d in the burning bush- he was probably deliriously dehydrated!
On our trip, we went to Mitzpe Ramon to begin, which is a small town on the edge of Mahktesh Ramon, a 25 mile long and 6 mile wide crater in the desert. Mahktesh is a hebrew word for this phenomenon known only in this country, (there are others in the Negev), the word for it does not literally translate into English (like most Hebrew phrases) and literally means "mortar" as in a mortar and pestle. By definition, though, a Mahktesh is an erosive valley walled with steep cliffs on all sides and drained by a single watercourse. The craters walls are made from layer upon layer of different-color rock beds containing fossils of shells, plants, and trees and create a rainbow of color in an otherwise colorless desert. The mahktesh floor is covered with heaps of black basalt, the peaks of ancient volcanos, jagged chicks of quartzite, huge blocks of overturned rocks, and beds of multicolored clays. It is beautiful as you walk through it to see the snad change from brown to red to orange to yellow and then just back to the sand that one would see on the beach. There was a great deal of flint rocks, which are a beautiful opaque brown color and while we did not see any fossils, unfortunately, I am told the canyon is rich with them.
When we got to the Mitzpe Ramon, we went to the visitor center to find out how to get to our campsite and have lunch overlooking the canyon. We learned there that it was going to be a heat wave for the next couple of days so we needed to be extra careful with water and being in the sun. Don't worry mom- I wore my sunscreen and a hat and drank until I peed clear! We also learned that it was much farther than we thought to walk to our campsite and we would have to wait until later in the day to do so because it was too hot! In the desert, no one goes outside in the heat between 1030am and 430pm when it is summer...it is like a very long forced siesta! So we sat and had our lunch and went to wait for the bus. While waiting for the bus, a tour bus came by asking where we were going and luckily they were driving right by the road to take us to the campsite so we hopped in this big tourbus who were all kind enough to drive us the 10 km (8 miles) down the road to where we could walk to the campsite. We found, more and more, that people in the desert just help one another like this to get from point A to point B because they are kind and know how it is to be stranded in the lonely desert. We were reminded over and over again in three days when we asked something like "how do we get there?" that "you are in the desert" so buses do not run often, people do not speak so much English and it is HOT!
So, we got off the bus thanking them profusely and walked the 1.5 hours to the campsite after being dropped off in the middle of this huge, vast crater. The campsite was run by Bedouins and after we set up camp and pitched our tent we met two guys our age who were hiking the Israeli trail after finishing the army. The Israeli trail, for those who do not know, is a 580 mile trail that crosses the entire country of Israel, with its southern end in Eilat, the southern most point in Israel on the Red Sea and its northern end in Dan, the northern most point of Israel at the Lebanese border. I have now hiked part of it on the 8th grade trip in the North and part of it on this trip. They were at the beginning of their trek, having started 3 weeks back in Eilat and I was very impressed with them. It typically takes about 30 to 70 days to finish this trek that they were choosing to do after the army to get to know the country even more before leaving to go travel the world. They both were very interested in going to the US to work and live for a period of time before traveling to places like South America, Thailand, and Australia. Like I said above, so many Israelis leave Israel after the army to go travel and I respect them for that because after 3 years of army in which they have no freedom, they want to live and do and experience. However, I found it very impressive that these two men had chosen to learn even more about their country than they did in the army by walking it from point to point. They were, at this time, learning what it was like to live in the desert of Israel and soon they will learn what it is like to live in each other part. It is something many Americans never know about our country, including me, to live in every area of the country to learn about your country and know it inside and out, to put your life on the line for your country, not any other. There is something in their blood that I do not know if Americans could ever have and it is inspiring. We also sat and had tea with the Bedouins who ran the campsite, all also around our age. They had grown up in homes but their parents grew up traditionally in tents and caves. They lived in the campsite and ran it because it was owned by one of their uncles, but most of them left the Mahktesh each day to work in another town, at a gas station. They were very kind and I actually felt bad because I wanted to talk to them more about their lives and lifestyle but I was very, very tired from the day. After a few cups of tea, I went to sleep in what was a very hot night in the desert.
The second day we woke up early to go for a hike before it was too hot to be out of shade. We decided on a 5 hour to 5.5 hour route through the desert. We ended up walking for 6 hours because we wanted to make an ascent to see the crater from a peak rather than from the floor. Look at my pictures and you will see the rainbow of colors on the walls of the crater, the awe of its vastness and how I saw the beauty of the desert, which many think of as only piles of sand. We were nearing the end of our trek and switching trails to get back to the campsite. We were running low on water since we had taken that ascent and got to a point in which it seems our trail ended and the one we wanted did not begin. We were tired and hot in the desert and we had not seen one person in the 5 hours we had been walking. We tried walking one way and then saw no more markers s we went back, then we began walking a different way but again we did not think this was the correct way. All of a sudden, as we began to walk in the direction we hoped was correct, a man in a red hat emerged from behind some bushes. His name was Thomas and he was British, meaning he spoke English. He told us which direction to go in (which happened to be the direction we were walking without certainty) and so we found our way thanks to him. Then, as we were continuing out walk down the road to our campsite in the heat, which was the midday heat we were not supposed to be walking in but were, nonetheless, because we had extended our hike and left later than planned, he stopped with Thomas stopped with his family to offer us water. We made the joke that "Today, G-d came to us in the form of a man named Thomas!"...which from a group of relatively secular Jews, is quite a joke!
After that we rested and Shoshana and Judith left to go back to the Kfar because they were pooped and had things to do back home. Amy and I stayed at the same Bedouin campsite for a second night. Part of me wanted to go back because the heat was so strong in the middle of the day that even shade did not help. My head hurt and the campsite was quite lonely and empty as well as I was so tired from the long walk we had taken that morning. However, this night was even better than the night before when we talked to the hikers and bedouins, because we moved into a small alcove area that was not available the night before, so that we could build a fire and move farther from a group of school children who had come to spend the night there. So we had dinner next to the fire and then walked out onto a hill top away from the light of the campsite to look at the stars. The moon shone so brightly, as you can see in my pictures of it and the quietness of the desert was so calm. That night I slept like a baby in the cool air of the desert night. We set our alarm to wake up early so we could start our journey out of the crater. When the alarm when off I opened my eyes to the desert sunrise literally at my feet. Without intending to, we had positioned our tent so that the door faced east and we had left it open to let the cool air in while we slept. We hit the snooze, of course, and each time it went off or just when I rolled over, I saw a bit more of the sun peaking over the doons of sand. I wish I had taken more a pictures of it, but the one I did was unable to capture its beauty so it is something I will just have to remember. Mom, it is like when we used to say when we were driving home from the beach and there was a beautiful sky filled with a rainbow of colors "I wish I could paint so that I could put this on paper"...only a more beautiful sight than I think I had ever seen before!
We got up early and started walking to the road where we could catch a bus to town. We had been walking for about an hour when the Bedouins we had talked to a couple nights before drove by and insisted on giving us a ride to Mitzpe Ramon. We told them we were going to Ein Avdat and they told us they were going to Avdat but we didn't understand each other and I didn't know these were very close to one another (I was tired and hot, I do not know how I missed that)...so they dropped us in Mitzpe and we caught the bus there. They told us to come visit them at a particular gas station where they worked and we were sort of like "sure, whatever" thinking we would never see them again. We told the driver Ein Avdat but he misunderstood us and we ended up in Avdat, in front of the particular gas station they had told us to go to and we saw their car parked there. What are the odds?
Avdat happened to be a beautiful Nabatean 12 acre acropolis that was highly recommended in my travel book so we took the opportunity to walk up there and see it. The name "Avdat" is the Hebrew version of the word "Oboda" (30 BC to 9 BC) a deified king who may have been buried there. The Nabateans, seminomadic pagans who came here from northern Arabia in the 3rd century BC, were in control of what is referred to as the "Spice Route" or "Incense Route" because they knew how to trek the desert from Petra to the Port of Gaza with a secret way of finding water. They became very wealthy because no one in the small community would tell their secret about finding water in the desert. As they became wealthy, these nomadic people settled in this fortress of Avdat, with a lavish lifestyle shown by the winepress and lavish bathhouse. The fortress also shows the traces of the Romans and Byzantines who conquered it, but were never shown the secret of the water that the Nabateans were able to find along their route in the desert. The promintent local dynasty intermarried with the family of Herod the Great, and the NAbateant kingdom was finally abolished by the Romans in AD 106. Most of the remains on the acropolis date from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries- the Christian Byzantine period. The city of was sacked by the Persians in AD 620 and was rediscovered only in the 20th century. A great deal of the remains had destroyed in an earthquake, but what does remain gives a strong sense of how these people lived with two beautiful churches, the wine press, an army camp, and the bathhouse nearly wholly intact aside from the roofs. It was a beautiful view of the surroundings from the top, as well, and well worth getting lost to see.
After finishing our walk around we went over the gas station and there were the people who we had met at the campsite and driven us to Mitzpe. Shareef, who was the one with the car, was insistent on driving us to Ein Avdat, where we were trying to go when we ended up there. He gave us nice cold water (we had been drinking a lot of hot water in the desert the past couple days) and drove us the 10 km (about 8 miles) down the road to Ein Avdat, also called Avdat Spring, which divides Avdat and Kibbutz Sde Boker, where Ben Gurion lived and is now buried. This day, we joked, G-d came to us in a man named "Shareef" because Ein Avdat was very difficult to find, as we would have had to walk about 5 km (3 miles) from the road to get to the beginning of the 2 hour hike through this canyon with a spring in the desert. The walk was beautiful and we met a British Olim (immigrant to Israel) who we talked to for about about the army and the chance for those who come from harsh backgrounds to make it in Israel. He was a psychologist who lived on a Kibbutz outside of Tel Aviv. As we went on, we met a French family who made me realize that any french I ever learned has most definately been replaced with Hebrew, unfortunately. There was a beautiful grove of poplar trees, as you can see in my pictures of the canyon and spring. At the top of the ascent you find what was once a water fall and you can see the marks of ropes which Bedouins once used to pull buckets of water from the spring.
After this, we just headed back to the Kfar because we were completely exhausted. It made me feel old, unable to move like I used to on my adventure trips to Maine, Alaska, Colorado and the Alps! Either way, I have not slept as well as I did last night in a long time and I may not for a long time. I was asleep by 10pm, which is rare here at the Kfar with all the kids and us sharing dorm rooms and did not wake up until 9am! I fell asleep sore from the walking and enriched from the experience of the people and beauty of the desert, something I thought was just a vast amount of unuseful land before coming to Israel.
