Back 10 years and 6 months ago (or, more precisely, 3,839 days ago - thanks Excel) I was on my winter vacation during my year abroad at the Hebrew University's Rothberg School for International Students. I rented a car with a friend, one of his friends and my sister Rachel, who was visiting at the time, and went North to go hiking and see what fortunes would cross our path.
Our first stop was at Kibbutz Ayelet HaShachar, where we had a good time rifling through the armament on their shooting range and had a nice round of target practice with 9mm handguns, desert eagles (an Israeli handgun) and an AK-47 and M-16. We did not want to be discriminatory with our selections, hence the well-rounded training.
We continued further North and stayed the night in Katzrin, the capital of the Golan Heights. The weather was consistently rainy and not too encouraging of hikes or being outside in general.
Nachal Jilaboun
The next morning the other two passengers who came along headed back to Jerusalem because of the weather. Rachel and I were going to head back that afternoon as well but first decided to stop at a nearby trail - Nachal Jilaboun - since the rain was letting up a bit. We parked the car and came upon the first waterfall along the path. At this point, Rachel consulted the "Let's Go! Israel" book (which, at the conclusion of this tale, you will understand why I don't recommend the book) and found that the path continues another 20 minutes to a second, larger waterfall and leads back to the parking lot. Simple enough.
We decided to venture on. Just after making that decision, I recall shielding my face from a sudden swath of hail that had emerged just as the sun had moments earlier. I saw a strange-looking dog close to us, reminiscent of the flying dog-like animal in the Neverending Story - long, white, shaggy, peculiar. The rest of the hike was just that - the trail was situated on two sides of a high, large set of gorges and a river valley in between. We hiked down and crossed the stream several times, and then came up the 'left' gorge. Rachel slipped and fell, hurting her back. This offered a point of reflection - the sky was getting dark as we approached dusk and the ground was difficult to negotiate, having been subjected to heavy rains earlier that day and the previous night, if not more. With each step, we accumulated more and more mud (boatz, in Hebrew), making the task of reaching the top of the gorge an ever-cumbersome task and requiring us to stomp the mud off our shoes by hitting our heels against each other and nearby rocks.
Finally we reached the top and the parking lot and surrounding eucalyptus trees were in sight. We were on the plateau of the top of the gorge, which made the experience more manageable, despite the continued difficulty and frustration with the mud. As we got closer, we realized that what lied beyond the trees was not at all the parking lot, but rather a deserted house, probably an old partially destroyed Syrian military installation. Having just seen "The Blair Witch Project," I was not at all interested in discovering a new place to explore, especially in the middle of a wooded area with the fall of darkness. At this point I was interested in tempering my fear and anxiety from reaching a crescendo, especially since I was interested in making sure that Rachel did not get frightened and start to panic.
There was something else that we did not find once we were among the trees: the path. Rachel and I were a few feet apart at this point, each starting to look for the trail and get back to the car. I'm not sure from where it came, but I turned to my right and, just about 3 feet away from me, a bull was staring at me as he ate some grass. I backed up, keeping eye-to-eye contact with the massive beast. Having kept my cell phone, water and extra layers in the car since we were anticipating a short tour, the only thing I had with my was my camera. I darted in different directions and began firing the flash to find the painted markings of the path we were following since it had reached a point of darkness that my eyes were having trouble adjusting to the dimmer ambient light. I found myself standing on a fence - not a good thing. The Golan Heights, having been conquered from Syria in 1967 and the site of a major war in 1973, was checkered with land mines, which were blocked off by chain link fences. I recognized immediately that I was standing on one of these fences and that it must have fallen as a result of wear and tear, disturbances from the cattle and other similarly-fated travelers. I retraced my steps backward and made sure to look down before I stepped forward.
After more difficulty and building frustrating from not finding the trail, I realized that the path was in the one direction I had not yet considered: just along the long side of the deserted house. I took Rachel and made sure that we passed the house briskly, but not without physically shielding the right side of my face from its view. We now were walking in ankle-deep water on a downward slope, following a large water pipe. To make matters even worse, since it was the height of the rainy season, the shrubbery was overgrown and impinging our way - complicated even more by the multitude of thorns on the shrubs.
Once we reached the bottom of the slope and leveled off, the water got deeper and the trail tougher to find. I continued to fire the flash to find our way, entering more swamp lands and beginning to get even more impatient with our situation. I thought to myself (and maybe even mentioned to Rachel at the time) that in the very far distance were village lights and that we could follow the lights to get help. At this point, it was completely dark. After attempting several possible directions for where I thought the path would continue, I reached denser plantation. All of the sudden, I saw lights from a passing truck in the distance - this was our rallying point.
Together we began to run as best we could, given the additional weight and burden of the thick mud. The rain began to fall again without pause. After what seemed like hours on the dash to the road and days from the start of the hike, we reached Gesher Pkak - the Pkak Bridge (meaning cork for the narrow passage it provided over the Jordan River). The next car to come our direction was a few minutes later, and was driven by Yehuda, a member of Kibbutz Gadot. I stood in the middle of the road, blocking his way. He rolled down the passenger window and I began to recite in Hebrew what happened to us, in a quite alarming voice. Yehuda just calmed us down and told us to get in the car. He took us back to his kibbutz, which I admittedly hadn't heard of before that night, and with his wife Rina, gave us clean clothes, hot showers, food and a place to stay for the night. After we ate dinner, we went straight from the kibbutz dining hall with Yehuda and the kibbutz's security guard to look for our car. We did find it pretty quickly, considering the saga we previously endured, and came back to the kibbutz to rest.
When I hear Rina and Yehuda retell this story from their perspective, Rina is always sure to note that she remembers that day to be one of the worst weather days on record and heard a specific warning on the radio for that night that drivers should not drive in the area where we were. She also always garners a good laugh when she compares Rachel and me to Ami and Tami, the Israeli equivalent of Hansel and Gretl. Yehuda says in a fatherly manner that we don't know how lucky we were. Aside from the balagan (total chaos) that we experienced, we were certainly lucky to find Yehuda and his family. Every trip I have made to Israel I am sure to be in touch with them and visit them again or see some of their kids around the country and consider them to be my family in Israel. Stay tuned for my next set of those on that [less dramatic] visit.
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