of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that
going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” John Muir, 1923.
understand how such a large group of adults could simply escape from life to
hike. We are not yet retirees; we are not post-army adventurers; and we are not
kids out on a school trip.
leaving behind the noise of the man-made world, of ‘going home to the
mountains’ and returning to the majesty of nature. We like to challenge
ourselves physically, clear our minds and reconnect.
I wonder if this would happen were we all ensconced
in our North American lifestyles. Previously, most of us were tied to desk jobs
sitting for hours in small cubicles, striving to meet pressing deadlines and
trying to stay afloat in a competitive dog-eat-dog world.
of olim (immigrants) find themselves living a more flexible lifestyle. Some are self-employed,
while others work hard overseas and then come home to Israel to energize.
And as the level of stress in Israelintensifies daily, who could say no to a stroll through the peaceful,
meditative desert? In these dark, violent, complicated times, the simple wildness of the desert
does seem to become a necessity.
chilly, we started off wearing hats and gloves, yet peeled them off as
the air warmed up.
crater). This unique geological formation is found only in the Negev and Sinai
and was created by erosion some five million years ago. Seven kilometers long
and four kilometers wide, it is surrounded by steep cliffs and has a small
opening at the east end.
and mustard colored sandstone. Like children in a sandbox, we would stop to
stuff our pockets with small rocks and fill bags with this dusty desert gold. We
ran into a group of Australian teenagers on an Israel trip and within minutes,
Jewish geography scored a few points. Where else but Israel could you find your
college roommate’s daughter’s cousin walking through a desert?
riverbed, making our way across the crater floor. Ahead of us loomed towering
cliffs. We looked up and, like ants climbing a blade of grass, we saw people
slowly moving along a ridge above. As we got closer, we saw it was a group of
teens on a school trip hiking down the path.
to leave their chatter and plunge back into the silence of the desert, to focus
on our steps and on our breath. We have each developed our own way of climbing
steep paths and we went to work, poles clicking, soles of boots creaking,
breath heaving.
pulled up my body, I was thankful for having practiced yoga over the years. As
we climbed, we would stop to see our progress, watching those teens become ants
crawling in a line across the crater floor. It was liberating, invigorating.
the top to survey our work, we had our traditional moment of silence to
appreciate the beauty of this tranquil place.
the end of this 20-kilometer hike.
with sheep’s wool, he looked as if he had always been a part of this landscape,
yet he left city life to come to the desert.
Fast forward thirty years and he
is now a specialist in camel husbandry and teaches his skills internationally.
He has developed a specialized camel saddle and, together with his Bedouin
staff, he offers camel tours. He has several simple rooms that he rents out and
offers hikers transportation to and from the trailheads. Ariel has incorporated the very wise words of John Muir that prefaced this posting, that “wildness is a necessity.”
tiny rooms on this remote camel farm. After a full day out in the Negev, we
felt intensely satisfied: grateful for life’s simple pleasures, thankful for
the strength in our own legs and in our ability to reconnect to a place that
takes us away from being over-civilized and back home to ‘inner peace.’
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