Safed to Tiberias

Nahal Akbara and the cliffs above

It is possible to walk between major cities, if you have good directions. I didn't, and took a wrong turn stunningly early on and tried simply walking south, toward the outskirts of Tzfat - a city which plays pinball with its pedestrians; every street turns around within a block. So I kept walking and turning and walking for an hour or two before realizing that the valley below with a trail running south at least had a chance of being the one I wanted to be in. Doubling back a few hundred meters never hurt anyone.

In the wadi, cattle grazed and birds chirped. The noon sky was perfectly clear, and everywhere was painfully bright. Gazelles ran (away) on the wooded cliffs. The small channel on the valley floor flowed gently with what might not have been sewage.

End-of-summer wildflowers at the edge of town, overlooking the wadi

After a kilometer or so, the wadi passed under a highway bridge and dropped away to the east, becoming very open; a paved road followed it. Both of them led to a small town, sleepy and lonely in the noon heat. A few horses grazed at the outskirts. Houses and paved streets appeared and dropped away one by one into land which was neither open nor built, farmed nor wild, just empty. A mosque stood there, its gold dome under scaffolding. Little dirt roads led to little dead ends and garbage dumps, full of wildflowers and pieces of deceased cows. Charming. Actually, they were, but not for people who needed to breathe.

the Akbara mosque

The path south - I did find a sign telling me that I'd found the Akbara wadi - led straight and steep down the canyon. The little town disappeared quickly behind the hill until just the lonely mosque remained. I kept going. The descent to the Kineret from Tzfat is well over a kilometer vertically, and the dirt road through the Akbara seemed to account for most of that, sometimes straight and steep, sometimes twisting and steep through the few pine groves, and eventually straight and gentle, through dusty dry grass and dusty dry brush and sometimes just dust until it reached a crossroads below the looming limestone cliffs where even in late summer water trickled over a footbridge and stream-fed oleander bloomed. 

I turned right and followed the trail over the hill. The area was familiar from a sea-to-sea walk - ים לים - almost exactly two years ago. But I couldn't figure out how to cross the highway. The blazes, no help, pointed to a large hole. I looked for a sign or traffic light, then tried following the trail, which (you'd think I'd remember) followed the hole under the highway, climbed some steps, burrowed through a pipe, and followed a concrete path down to Nahal 'Amud, which really couldn't have been so muddy last time (or could it?). I recommend crossing that stream to anyone who likes Russian roulette. It works on the same principle, but messier and (so far as I know) nonviolently ; sometimes the water cools your feet, sometimes the mud sucks them in, not eternally (while all information is as correct as possible we cannot guarantee accuracy, follow my advice at your peril, etc...) but unpleasantly. 

Stars above Mt. Arbel

After a few hundred yards the stream dried out, and the trail followed it. Cliffs and caves loomed on both sides, blocking the sun more and more. I kept feeling that any second now the canyon would open up and I'd be five minutes from the Kineret, but it didn't until evening. I followed the trail down from the rocks into banana plantations, endless patterns of green leaves and blue bags, and then mango and olive orchards. I considered camping there but noticed hoses round the trees' bases. I didn't know when they turned on. I also didn't know whether they had dogs, or alarms, or unsympathetic guards, but I have my priorities. I kept walking until the trail went past the orchards, which meant nightfall. I heard the dusk prayer from a mosque (I assume; by this time I couldn't see it) a little way up the road. I could camp on a rock shelf above an abandoned building or I could trip over my feet. I didn't care to trip. The stars twinkled above the rock until the harvest moon rose.

In the morning, or close enough anyhow, I continued up the road towards Arbel. Flocks of egrets flew through the valley, first silhouettes above, then, as I climbed, white figures below. The trail ascended steeper and steeper up the brown rock until it really was mountain climbing, over metal handbars sunk into the rock red and pink now from the sunrise. The summit was bare and flat, covered in dry grass. A falcon flew in from the east.

Foxes

A fox scratching itself  in a valley below Mt. Tabor, about half an hour after sunrise

Even in the valley the night was cool and the dew was heavy enough that the barking dogs, roosters, alarm, and dawn call to prayer weren't needed; being cold and wet was enough to wake me up. The sun rose in the north (well, at about a 90-degree angle to where the sun had set. Don't even ask) over the scrub-oaks on the hillside, and the tall pines soon glowed orange. Eventually the hill slid into a narrow valley and the path met the main trail. A fox perched above, thin and tense.

Fox crossing the trail

A fox. I had seen fox-like animals before, grizzled-brown tanim which ran like rabbits. But this was pale and sat motionless. I walked past as slowly as I dared and changed lenses. After a few seconds the fox decided that it had somewhere very important to get to very fast. I walked on, but saw another fox on the other side of the trail, which after a little while got up and walked past me.

More foxes seemed likely. I waited at the crossroads. As long as I stayed fairly still they ignored me, crossing the path, scratching in the sunlight, walking lightly and quickly. One or two actually walked straight at me, head low, staring, close enough that it was easy to see the texture of their gray and brown fur, close enough that it was easy to see 

Fox staring at me. Read what you like into its expression.

how small and catlike they were, close enough to put anyone on edge, but the bluff charge didn't work, because when they approached within ten feet or so I instinctively made some sudden move which scared them off. Mostly they acted as if I didn't exist, and seeing a fox cross without a footstep away from me fifteen feet ahead was almost as jarring as seeing one that wanted to run me off. I didn't stay long; for one thing, as the sun rose higher the foxes melted away. But for that half hour in the early morning in the narrow valley north of Mount Tabor, they stalked around the crossroads, fearless.

Fox scratching by the side of a dirt road