First Hike of Many

I'm sorry, my dear readers, for my long absence from the keyboard. Just preceding the would be publication of my previous post, as I scrambled to sort and upload the photos from my Tiyul, I was forced to run out of the room to catch the bus for our second, the later being two full days in the city of Jerusalem. I was, as such, unable to write in that time and have, as a result, accumulated quite an array of new stories, the writing of which I suspect will take me the better part of tonight. I'll be splitting the days up as I go to help avoid the feeling of no-end-in-sight in both myself, your dedicated author, and in yourselves. Unfortunately, I realized only as I sat down on the bus itself that my camera had not in fact charged despite the afternoon of leaving it attached to the computer so I will do my best to accumulate a portfolio from the other various cameras I managed to jump in front of. Here goes.

Part One of the Jerusalem Series

The bus ride was not unbearable by any means, nor was the hill to the lookout point over the west bank of which my peers found great pleasure in complaining about loudly and often to my thinly veiled amusement. And yet, right from the start, the view was amazing. As I rounded the top of the incline I looked around me and realized that, for the first time in my life, everything around me was completely unobscured. There was no next-mountain to get in the way. No thick cluster of trees to obscure my line of sight. The land was just rolling hills forever, until the buildings were the size of the rocks in the wall at my feet, and then until the mountains in the distance matched the size of the diminutive buildings from my perspective and every color faded to a nearly uniform blue. As I marveled at what would become almost a common sight over the next day and a half, my class settled down for the lesson.

As we concluded and headed down the hill for our hike, I purchased yet another bottle of water and tied my hair up in the Bedouin style that the councilors had showed us in order to poorly imitate the function of the hat I had forgotten to pack. We began down the trail, I myself in the front dozen, and promptly failed to go any further. What must have been less than three hundred feet down the trail, those of us in the front realized that we were no longer being followed. The conundrum took us a solid twenty minutes to navigate and, eventually, remedy, but once our party was reunited we continued on our way shortly to come out from the partially wooded area in which we had waited and came out on the summit of a cliff from which the view would topple even the magnitude of the previous peaks significance to me. On the rocky ledge of the mountain I could see nearly straight down. down. down. The cliff face of painted orange and white sloping so steeply beneath me that I could see the foot of the mountain clearer than the winding path in front of me. We began our descent.

I decided, in a flash of cocky self-confidence, that I would take the, often vertical descent, without once using my hands. I slid, edged, leaped, crouched, and scurried down the many crevices and rungs in the mountain without using my hands a single time. My arrogant challenge had attracted the competitive nature of a few of the boys, only one of which was even a challenger, but who too eventually failed. There I was, scaling a literal cliff overlooking the mountain on which the Judge Gideon had fought off the Philistines. I was blown away.

After a time, we reached the foot of the mountain. We were tired, sweaty, and most of us were complaining of how badly we had to pee.
"Come" said Guy, our councilor "It is bonding"
We stood single file just outside of and with our backs to the bus in an empty field of dirt six of us in all, no cover in sight. The wind blew firmly against my left cheek.
"look out at the mountains and just let it go" He said, a few feet to my right...
I think, dear readers, you can conclude what, because of no fault of mine, happened to our dear friend Guy.

To his credit he stayed, as is his fashion, perpetually in good spirits. He told us that in the army they would go in the group showers to talk to their friends and pee on their legs.
"By the time they notice, its too late!"

This country is one enormous oxymoron. Allow yourself in, and there is so much brotherly love. Stay out, and be forced out. The Jews hate the Arabs, the Arabs hate the Jews, everyone hates the government, and the Chasid's hate everyone. And yet I am finding so much love, and above all so much awe.