This weekend, I went hiking with an Israeli group called "Hug Elad."
The group is a loosely organized collection of very serious hikers. All were Israeli - mostly Ashkenazi, and ranging in age from 27 to 78. In fact, the founder was one of the eldest! The organization provides transportation, drops off our packs and tents at our camp site for Friday night and cooks up a soup for dinner. Other than that, the attitude was very much: every hiker for him/herself.

It was fantastic, challenging and a bit humbling. We hiked about 23 km the first day and much more than that on the second day. We began the trek near Hebron, in the West Bank and ended at Kibbutz Ein Gedi - 400m below sea level.

On the first day I hiked with the "easier" of the two groups. Easier in this case was a relative term, although as the youngest participant, I felt I had no right to complain.
As we hiked through the rocky desert of the west bank, we came across Bedouin tribes tending to their goat herds. The Bedouins are a nomadic Arab tribe that make their homes throughout Israel's deserts. Their 'settlements' consisted of a grouping of tents, a creatively designed pen for the goats and the occasional truck or jeep. During the day, the young boys walk with their herds, navigating their way expertly through the tough and vast desert terrain. A few people in our group spoke Arabic so we were able to communicate a bit with the tribes. At one point, we came across a group of boys laying soccer. Carefully removing all the rocks, they had cleared a full-size soccer-field in the midst of the desert. (Some things are universal - touching cultures in all parts of the globe.)

My favorite moment of the weekend was when we came across a white goat whose face looked as if it had been bashed in. "You are ug-ly" I called out (as usual, not really thinking before I spoke.) A fellow hiker admonished me, pointing out that the creature had a cleft lip that (of course) had never been surgically repaired. As I swallowed my pride and apologized to the woman for offending both her and the goat, the animal approached me and began rubbing her dripping nose against my tummy, coming as close to embracing me as any goat ever could. Her Bedouin caretakers looked on in surprise at her very un-goatly behavior and I just caressed her and apologize as she snuggled closer - breathing with difficulty due to her disfigurement. I had to tear myself away from her as the group continued onward... (Luckily, my friend Ori gave me as a birthday present a stuffed replica of my friend, so I won't forget her!)

As we hiked onward, from a distance, on the crests of the desert peaks, we saw camels and horses silhouetted against the expanse of blue sky. The air was crisp, and a bit cold, but the direct sun and brisk pace of hiking kept us warm.

The two guides told us anecdotes about the history, topography, and biblical significance of the sites around us. Hundreds of years ago, the hills had been home to monks, and we could see the remnants of their settlements in crannies and caves that were built into the overhanging rocky cliffs.

As night began to fall, the two groups joined together, and although we could see the
former Jordanian fort that was our campsite destination, it was still many kilometers away. We journey up and down the spines of the desert hills - as we headed south and west, the desert became sandier and we entered the true Midbar Yehuda. From here on out, we were alone in the desert, without the company of Bedouin tribes and villages. From a distance, reminding me of the tinyness of Eretz Yisrael - we saw the light of Jerusalem, of Hebron and of Bethlehem.

Arriving in the cement fortress atop a mountain, we set up our tents, sang the shabbat blessings and fought our way to the giant pot of soup above the fire. People were a bit cranky and impatient, and - quite frankly - fitting of Israeli stereotypes. I had some soup and was asleep in my tent before 9.

It was a cold night, but not intolerable. The wind whistled and shoo the nylon of my tent but I stayed warm enough by curling up. Before too long, Ori came to wake me up at 5:30 with a warm cup of tea and we huddled around the fire for a bit before heading back on the trail.

Be 6:30 we were snaking our way down into the Yehuda Desert, not stopping for breakfast until at least 9. The "rest" stops with the more challenging group were brief, leaving little time to sit or make an all important pit stop. Our guide, however, was fascinating. A history teacher, Shai could glance at the mountains all around us and name them, bringing them alive with stories from his life and from the Bible. At times, he read descriptions of the hills straight out of the Torah - made all the more fascinating by the fact that Shai is not religious.

We descended into a Wadi, walking down the paths that thousands of years of water had carved into the desert. Clammering over rocks and small pools of water, we descended further into the rock. At one point, some of the men climbed their way superman style across a deep pool of water. Leveraging themselves above the water, they crossed the pass by putting their arms and legs against the rocky sides of the cliff.

Twice, we came across undetonated bombs in the desert -left forgotten from training exercises of the Israeli Defense Forces. Even in the wilderness, the conflict that plagues this country was still present. Some of the men in the group had worked with bombs in their army time and were able to tell us more details about the types of explosives and the time periods they came from.

On the second day, we hiked toward the highest waterfall in Israel - I think(!) they said 400 meters high. Below us was the Dead Sea, and in the distance the mountains of Jordan. We could see the lights from the Jordanian towns on the other side of the Sea.

Near nightfall, we begin a steep and difficult descent of about 300 meters toward Ein Gedi. However, our guide, worried about doing the steep trek in darkness, aborted this path. This meant that we had to hike an extra 7 kilometers - in the dark - to another site where we could descend. At this point, most of the hikers were losing strength and mental fuel. We helped each other along and continued into the night, using only moonlight to light the way. The final descent was incredible steep and treacherous in spite of being along a marked trail. Carefully, we hiked in silence, eager to avoid being fined as the other group had been. - Hiking this trail at night was forbidden!

The cars heading north alongside the Dead Sea ever-so-slowly became bigger and beneath us I could finally make out the lights of Kibbutz Ein Gedi. About 1 km before the finish of the hike, I stopped to rest and breathe in the beauty of the desert. The moon, waxing, seemed to hang upside down in the sky and the stars came out one by one. I craned my neck to look up, trying to see the mountain peak from which we had come.

An hour later, the bus dropped me off in front of my dorm. I was smiling, exhausted, sore... and so grateful for such a unique experience




HERE ARE SOME PICTURES:
midbar-yehuda-2008.blogspot.com/


And the raw pictures at:
picasaweb.google.com/ecyashar/MidbarYehudaElad2008