5. INSCRIBED IN THE BODY
a hike in the mountains of Eilat
note: the photographs in this chapter are from a different hike in the Eilat Mountains, several years later
With the faint light of dawn behind the Edom mountains in Jordan, our bus winds its way along the Egyptian border towards our trailhead and we enter into the realm of the stark, gray mountains of Eilat, still blanketed in the night’s darkness. Nowhere else within the borders of Israel do these primeval granite layers expose themselves on the earth’s surface – they remain deep underground, covered by much younger geological strata.
It is only in the High Mountains at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula that the granite rocks show themselves in their full majesty. Ilana, my dancer friend who had introduced me to this hiking group the previous spring, had often talked to me about trekking in the High Mountains that rise to the height of 2600 meters, much higher than any mountain found in Israel. Filled with reverence and wonder, she spoke of walking for seven days and sleeping under the stars, waking with the first rays of the sun.
And so it was Ilana who planted in me the great longing to trek in the Sinai mountains, but it is still hard to imagine that I will be able to overcome my fears to undertake such a trek as I am still new to hiking in the desert. I will have to prepare myself, one step at a time. This trip to the mountains of Eilat, in January of 1994 is my first overnight outing with this hiking group. I see it as a preparation for my trek in the High Mountains of the Sinai.
*
On the way south, we stop for a half-day hike down the canyon of Nahal Gov, a narrow gorge that descends in a series of vertical drops from the Negev plateau into the broad streambed of Nahal Tzin, just as it reaches the Arava valley. It runs parallel to the old road to Eilat, the stretch with hairpin turns known as the Scorpion’s Ascent.
Of course, the Gov stream is not running on this sunny day. It would have been foolhardy to enter such a narrow gorge in the rain, for there is no way to escape from the sudden torrents of the flashfloods. The basins at the feet of the waterfalls in Nahal Gov, however, are full of water – a sure sign that the stream has flooded not long ago.
The only way across the deep pools at the base of these drops is to swim through the cold waters. We are offered the possibility of bypassing this entire section on a path above the gorge and a few hikers choose this option.
I stand there, hesitating, well aware that my backpack will get soaked, that I will have to continue the hike in wet clothes in the crisp January air, while my new hiking boots might get ruined. On the other hand, the path above the gorge looks scary, arousing my fear of heights, so that is not the simple solution either.
It is here that I understand that the very point of this hike is precisely to go through the gorge. Suspending all my worries and inhibitions, I jump right into the chilly waters of Nahal Gov. It is an act of letting go. My entire life I had held back, I would come up with every possible excuse why not to do things that were unplanned, things for which I was not prepared, that might upset my sense of propriety, security and comfort. Here, in the narrow gorge of Nahal Gov, I learned that there is something exhilarating in that very act of letting go – the joy of casting away the load of those excuses, a sense of liberation in taking the plunge.
It is also the elation of overcoming physical challenges – of going down the swaying cable ladders or holding onto a rope between my legs with my feet pressing against the rock wall, moving my legs down one by one, with my weight thrown back. Then swimming across the cold, deep pools, at times six to seven meters long, only to meet another rope at the other end where I must pull myself up the slippery rocks. It gives me a triumphant sense of “I did it”.
Then there is the sensory experience of the place itself – the gorge – which I would have missed had I opted for the bypass. It is the almost archetypal experience of finding myself in a narrow passage, with its tall cliffs towering above me, where I can see only a thin sliver of sky. It is the sense of being inside, totally committed to the time and place of the gorge – where everything else ceases to be.
I know, now, that this is the reason I hike.
*
The following morning, we are back on the bus, after spending the night in a youth hostel in Eilat. At the trailhead, a group of youngsters are just waking up in the crisp early morning air, still wrapped in their blankets and sleeping bags. They must have been cold that night. It is winter and the difference of temperatures between day and night in the desert can be huge. It will be freezing cold to sleep outdoors in the High Mountains of the Sinai, I think to myself. I am glad that we had spent at least this winter night indoors.
Our hike begins by going down into a reddish sandstone gorge known as “The Red Canyon”. This gorge is so narrow I can almost touch both sidewalls with my hands, walls that jut out at places and then gracefully bent inwards, confronting me with soft, sculptural shapes of sandstone. An even more archetypal passage.
Slowly, I find my way through the gorge, brushing off the sand from the grainy walls with dimpled textures, as if formed by fingers imprinting themselves into soft clay. It is still not quite light, I am barely awake, and I am tunneling through the narrow passage without having to make an effort. My movements are practically dictated by the protrusions and curving spaces and I find myself returning to forgotten modes of locomotion I outgrew long ago – the instinct to crawl, or to slither on my belly, like a snake.
Before long, I am thrust into a dreamlike state, as if hovering underwater, with the warm liquid substance enveloping my skin, buzzing in my ears, cutting me off from the world above. I am cuddling up in the hollows, hugged by the rounded bellies of soft, powdery rock that stir up sensations from a distant past.
As I tumble out of the dark, narrow passage, I am born into the light, and find myself in a wider wadi, bordered by high walls. On one side of the dry riverbed the rocky walls are painted a brilliant orange red in the early morning sun, which is now warming my body. It seems like these tall, proud rocks have been covered with molten gold, while the other side of the wadi is still in shadow, almost black. This is Nahal Shani, the Scarlet Stream.
I am cruising down the riverbed, as the dancer in me is awakened. Thoroughly attuned to the rocks that guide the dry river, I become the water that hardly ever flows here in this extreme desert of the Eilat mountains with an annual rainfall of only 30 mm. I sense the river-rounded pebbles under my feet, and flow with the turns of the dry wadi, the fluctuations of its wide, then narrow spaces, with the interplay of shifting shadows and light, as they choreograph the steps of my dance.
In the radiance of the morning sun, we come to a pause at a bend in the riverbed, surrounded by large blocks of sandstone in saturated ochres and reds, just where a break in the rocks reveals a view of the distant peaks across the border. Yehoshua, who has been guiding the group with love and devotion for decades, has carefully chosen the stop for breakfast – he recognizes the necessity to nourish both body and soul.
After our break, we walk past huge boulders scattered along the waterless river, as the light becomes brighter and brighter. Then we climb out of the stream, crossing over the watershed into Nahal Raham, where we move upriver through the broad, gravelly streambed that seems almost flat, except for the sudden rises of a couple of waterfalls where we must clamber on hands and feet.
The sun is now out in full force and it is getting extremely hot when we reach a deep valley encircled by high ridges. In the center of this rounded bowl is a cluster of date trees – a tiny oasis. It is a place of centering, that seems to be holding the entire valley together. The place is known as called Diklei Raham, the palms of the Raham stream, but as the name Raham consists of the same letters as the Hebrew rehem, it could be translated as the palm trees of the womb.
Resting in the shade of the worn, ancient trees, the centripetal valley gives me renewed strength, enabling me to gather, indeed, to concentrate, my forces, before the long haul up.
The ascent seems endless, testing my heightened state of consciousness, tempting me to succumb to exhaustion. I decide to maintain my own steady pace and not try to keep up with anyone, and soon I realize I can climb with much less effort, even without the need to sit down and rest. It is my upward momentum that keeps me going, as I suspend my belief that I do not have the stamina for such steep climbs in the desert heat. I learn on this ascent, contrary to what most beginning hikers think, that climbing uphill is not at all the most difficult part of hiking – going down is, as it can be damaging to the knees, while the pull of gravity tends to challenge your sense of balance. No, this is not too bad, I think. Perhaps I will soon be ready to venture into the mountains of the Sinai.
As I reach the top, the vast, orange sands of the Arava valley burst out in front of my eyes, erasing the memory of my exertion. Up on this ridge, I can see forever – down the Syrian African Rift valley, all the way to the Gulf of Eilat and beyond, to the African savannas; to the north, past the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee towards Lebanon – and, to the east, across the Jordanian border, into the Mountains of Edom. Somewhere in those mountains, a little further north lies the forbidden and still unreachable city of Petra. I can vividly feel its presence. I do not dare to dream, as I sit on this ridge in January 1994, that in less than two years I will find myself across that border, hiking in the sensuous red sandstone mountains of that necropolis carved into the rocks, mesmerized by the intertwining of landscape and architecture, of eros and death.
We descend from that lookout on a long winding trail that seems to be going off towards the Mountains of Edom. Then it turns into a very narrow path with near perpendicular drops on either side. This is my first “knife-edge”, as the notorious natural formation is known in the lore of hikers, a phenomenon I have dreaded ever since I first heard about it. I walk slowly, very slowly, keeping my center of gravity low, balancing myself on the precarious path by spreading out my arms, as if walking a tightrope.
With a sigh of great relief, I reach the foot of the ridge, and we walk towards the Pillars of Amram. The pink sandstone pillars feel tall and protective, with dark, enigmatic passages between them that vanish deep into the rock, evoking the White Place in New Mexico, where, for the first time, I came face to face with the eros of the desert. And the eros within me.
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