Three Score and Ten

This is what I did a year ago, February 4th:

It is my birthday, marking the biblical three score and ten, so naturally I decided to come to Israel and honor my passage here, with a long walk in the biblical woods, in the Shefla of Judea to be precise.  No snow, no ice, no cold, no party, no cake, just the peace of walking in the land of milk and honey.

Think again.

If you do a quick check on what happened on February 4 in history and you will find it littered with calamity:

• The great earthquake of 1169 in Sicily,
• The first protestant martyr in England was burned at the stake in 1555
• An Ecuadorian earthquake killed 40,000 in 1797
• the conference that created the Confederacy in 1861
• Manchuria fell to Japan
• Hitler becomes commander in chief
• Patty Hearst was kidnapped
• A Central American earthquake killed 22,000
• A CTA train in Chicago rams another in the Loop, falling to the ground
• Amadou Diallo was assaulted
• In Israel two helicopters collided and killed 73.

Today was closer to that litany of catastrophe than the planned walk in the woods.

Waking at 5 to the sound of rain, fourth day of rain to be precise,  I sensed that it would be a little messy.  Predictions said it would end around 9.  It didn’t.  Letting me out at the trail head, the taxi driver saw the lake of brown water where a road should be and asked if he should take me somewhere else.  I said thanks but no, having already scoped out other routes.

Clad in my fleece and raincoat, as it was in the upper 40s, I walked along the road a little while to another opening.  Some ATV’s did a hundred donuts here, creating quite the mud pile, but there was just enough room for me to skirt the mess and head up a gravel road that was clearly wet but not mired.

Up I went.

Trails either go up or down, here. They hate flat.  The rain was ever present but never heavy.  The trail was rocky but not too muddy.  This might just work.  And it did for some time.  Then the trail got narrower, fiercely guarded by thorny bushes, warning you to stay on the path.  According to my map, I was to ascend to the ridge then down the other side; a mere 6.5 mile hike today ending in Nes Harim.

Then two things happened.  The path grew narrower yet, a sort of ditch, and then came the rocks.  Yes, rocks were already in the path, sometimes wonderfully positioned to allow me to step over the water that was flowing downhill from the rain.  W

When I say rocks, though, I mean ROCKS, way more than ‘three score and ten’

For about two hours I climbed over rocks, up rocks, sometimes using railings installed, all while it was raining, so the rocks and the railings were slippery.  This was turning from a hike to a slog.  Every 30-40 meters another obstacle presented itself, some with railings and some not.

Several times I had to size up the situation first, remembering the one day I spent climbing up Table Mountain in Cape Town.  Look for the handholds and the footholds.  Handholds be hide as even three fingers can give you purchase to move safely.  Mr. Walking Stick was often unable to help during these scaling.  I had to toss it just a little ahead and trust I would get there.

Remember that it was raining and the rocks were often wet.  Even if my shoes were not caked with mud, they had a slick coat from the sandy soil.  Also, this was a narrow valley and there was next to no cell coverage.  One mistake would be too many. “I will not die on my 70th birthday in Israel,” I muttered to myself.  No cute obituaries for me.

A bracing walk in the biblical woods had become training for of wilderness survival.

While there were some dicey moments, I did make them all, and no I am not going to scale El Cap next.  The one time I came close to real worry was on a steep slope of mud, and I could barely keep my feet from sliding down.  They did, in fact, and I grabbed a tree limb quickly to rescue my effort before losing both grip and balance.

The rocks did end, for a while.  And the rain also quit, for a while. Making it to a flat spot with a dry rock I took off my raincoat and hung it on Mr. Walking Stick, sat down and removed one shoe and sock to allow all three to get a little drier.  There appeared some brightness in the sky.  It might be a pretty good day, I thought.

After changing socks, eating a cheese sandwich and drinking some water, it was time to get going.  Twenty meters after starting I met the most daunting rock of all.

I pondered that one for several minutes, but not ‘three score and ten’

Even for a moment considered going back down the path to a gravel road that would add miles.  Then, as if by respecting it, the rock revealed a handhold on the far left, which let me get up onto a sloped edge where I found another handhold.  Mr. Walking Stick went ahead, and I kneed myself up onto the broad ledge, finding an empty Coke can waiting for me.  How?  Turns out there was a gravel road just 30 meters further on.

Now it was all rocks and mud, a combination which is not good.  Slick feet on slick rock is a recipe for injury.  And just to keep me from getting cocky, it started raining again. “Really,” I said to the sky, remembering the joke about the man who stumbles into a church after one calamity after another.  He lifts his face to the heavens and says, “Why.”  And from the sky come an ominous voice, “because you piss me off.”

That’s what it felt like up there, a cosmic smack for even existing.  Wet, muddy, shoes and socks squishing, I followed the waymarks “with drooping pace” and James Weldon Johnson put it.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, I said, knowing there was only one way to get to the end and that was to go there.

I reached a rock I needed to descend.  There was the coke can.  I had walked in a giant circle, following the waymarks in the other direction.

Out comes the phone.  There must be a road somewhere.  There was.  Gravelly, rocky, with regular ponds of brown water, but a road.  In negotiating the water and mud, I used Mr. Walking Stick to probe ahead and to balance when going from rock to rock.  Many times it stuck in the much, and, being foldable, the lower section might stay stuck when I pulled up.  Then I would have to stop and reconnect them.

Today, though, when nearly losing my balance, it bent a little.  Nuts.  And now, going toward a giant pond of water, I put it in the dirt and when I went to pull it from the mud, the lower section broke off.  Mr. Walking Stick was no more.  This happened back in ‘17 when I got to Dover England.  That stick had been with me since ‘12.  What I had was its replacement, and had a similar lifespan.

But what to do now? Not knowing what rocks and ponds lay ahead, I elected to back track to the gravel road.  No giant rocks there at least.  I went back, consulting the phone for a new route out.  Yes, there was a road that took me to the main road to Nes Harim, a village where my hguest room mwas.  Holding the pieces of my companion in my hand I trudged up the long hill (always up, up, up) until I reached my lodging.

Shoes and stick stayed outside.  Once inside, pants were rinsed, shower taken.  But being Shabbat, and thus no stores being open, my birthday dinner will be my other cheese sandwich and a chocolate bar, chased with some watered rum.  Take that Nietzsche!

(note: the two photos are purloined because mine were too large to use.  It looks a lot better in good weather, doesn’t it)