Northern coastline - fishponds, sand dunes, unexplained explosions, etc.

"...then you should go to Ma'agan Michael. They have fishponds, and the migrating birds stop there," someone said.
All right.
The fishponds aren't just at Ma'agan Michael, which is a kibbutz on the coast midway between Netanya and Haifa; they stretch north for kilometers. On maps the coast looks like a net, full of blue holes.
On the ground at Ma'agan Michael it looked a bit more solid. It supported plenty of tour buses, anyway. The area is not a tourist destination and I saw no groups walking around. I weaved around the buses towards the gray herons. A car stopped.
"Do you know how you can drive onto the beach?" 
I had seen a bike pass on dirt roads beyond the fishpond, but didn't know how to get down to the shoreline. "I'm sorry, I don't know."
"You speak English?" the driver asked in English.
"I speak Hebrew, but I don't know how to get to the beach", I said quickly in Hebrew.
"It would be better if you knew how to get to the beach and didn't speak Hebrew," he said in English.
After he drove on, I turned back to a heron below the banks of a pond, which had speared a fish and was holding it proudly.

Gray heron

I walked around the fishponds and the beach (which wasn't drivable). Ibises, egrets, and others flew about by the dozens, but the place didn't seem crowded. By late afternoon I was hemmed in by No Entry signs and walked out past the kingfishers. I checked a map, found a campground a few km up the coast, and headed north on a path through the fishponds until the gunshots started. Distant ones, but I would have preferred them to be more distant. Walking further north, I heard them much closer, so much closer that I cut across to the road while humming loudly and trying to be very visible. I walked the next kilometer or so by the side of the coast road and walked back toward the fishponds once I was past the shots. A turnoff from the highway led to a dirt road, which led to...
"What's at the end?" A father and son, in dati clothing, were walking in the same direction as I was.
"I'm sorry, I don't know. I have no idea." But I kept walking. In the end, the path followed a stream down to a beach with a conspicuous lack of No Camping signs.
It was late in the day. The dunes and wildflowers already glowed orange. I found a pass between dunes as the sun set through the beachgrass and slept in the sand. I tried literally sleeping in the sand, which was a good insulator, but a cold wind blew over the beach and you can't really burrow into the sand. 
Dawn glowed orange over Zikhron Ya'aqov and Fureidis. It was light enough that I had no trouble seeing the sand dunes, soft and brown in the early morning. A few birds called, but otherwise the beach was peaceful and BAM.
What could possibly improve the morning more than random explosions to the northeast?
I walked in the other direction, back towards the stream, which rippled over the sand where it met the sea. Farther upstream, kingfishers staked out a shady pool. Even farther, egrets stalked the stream and ibises flapped around the fishponds. I walked around the dunes before heading out past the fishponds, long lens ready for birds. A family on bikes stopped by me. Actually, they stopped around me. I wasn't really surrounded but I couldn't see all of them at once. 
"What kinds of birds are around here?"

(שלדג (יש אחד שם! עכשיו אף...לא, הינה הוא

I had some idea of what they were in English, but in Hebrew?...

לבנית

אנפה

ועוד שאני לא יודע את שמם

I mentioned a few birds whose names I knew in Hebrew (some from signs in other parks; one from a random stranger who had helped me identify a kingfisher earlier in the morning) before heading north through the fishponds towards a bus stop- at least until I got boxed in by No Entry signs and headed for the road, at least until I found that the coast road has pedestrian bridges some of the time...
It was a long walk to the bus stop.

Around the Kinneret (also, secrets of not staying dry in a thunderstorm)

Egret across from the mountains and wadis of the northwestern shoreline of the Kinneret

Well, about two-thirds of the way. There is a sixty-kilometer trail all the way around, but I didn't have time. It's a very nice trail, put up "to promote the public right to walk freely on the Kinneret's shores". Several areas on the shore, notably the northern end, are military firing zones (mapped but completely unmarked), in which "the public right to walk freely" is subject to the army's approval, but the trail goes right through. I took the road; firing zones aren't used often, but I didn't have the army's approval, and I don't find unpredictable shooting fun when I'm on the wrong end.

Marshes on the southeast shore

I started at the southern tip of the Kinneret and got off the roads (but into a banana plantation) as soon as I could. Soon the trail dived into the marshes which fringe the Kinneret's eastern coast. I walked through dark tunnels carved out of the heavy-hanging reed-stalks, through fig and blackberry thickets, through bushes and reeds. The lake itself was rarely visible. Every kilometer or so the marsh gave way to rocky beaches with signs describing the dangers of swimming so elaborately that I had no trouble realizing how popular it was. Further north, vacation towns (silent and empty on a September weekday) covered the shore, and the marshes vanished altogether, leaving grass-covered, sandy beaches. Egrets walked and flew around the edges.

Kinneret Trail between marshes and the Golan

Evening drew in. I didn't know where to sleep. The beaches and marshes offered soft ground but the prospect of people. The steep, empty golden-brown hills of the Golan might have a tree where I could hang a hammock. Following instinct, I kept walking. By bad luck, I walked into a beach town as east-moving clouds glowed in the sunset, couldn't estimate its size, and headed for the hills. Much of the Golan is also firing zones. Every few minutes as the dusk advanced I stopped to check my map. 

I lay down in an unused trail midway uphill but far above the wadi between the slopes above 'Ein Gev on the eastern coast. The dusk clouds moved further across the Kinneret, hiding and revealing the moon. Thunder crackled, then the rain came. I curled up in my sleeping bag, lined and waterproof in the hot night. Lightning flashed through the fabric and rain splattered over it. 

Believe it or not, this is not my secret design for a rainproof shelter, and at this point, or at least after the second or third time that a storm came through that night, a rational being might have realized that a) this was not a comfortable way to spend the night, b) there was a highway and bus stop 200 m down the hill, and c) staying outside in a thunderstorm is foolish and risky. In my defense, a) I didn't care and the sleeping bag was waterproof anyway, b) ditto, and c) I was in the safest possible place to be outdoors in a thunderstorm, midway uphill, below the lightning and above the flood. 

Sunrise clouds over the lake

Due to my immense caution and foresight, I stayed fairly dry, or at least got dry by dawn. North of 'Ein Gev the beaches are open and the lakeshore is lined with smooth dark basalt rocks. Kingfishers and egrets flapped about as the sun began to shine above the wide, empty lake.

Looking down a wadi at the Kinneret

Around Kursi, further up the coast, I took orchard paths inland and uphill to avoid a firing zone. The dust was warm and brown in the windless sunlight, and the air was hotter and stiller than the dust. Honeybees buzzed from their white boxes, but the bees were much too warm, lazy, and not actually aggressive even to consider swarming after me. The orchard path ended at a road up into the Golan towards another path into treeless hills, climbing through a wadi and then up into orchards and bare ground. The lakeshore is quite a place to hike - hundreds of meters' climbing and still below sea level. It takes work. Then the trail descended to the northern shore.

Date palm in the evening near Capernaum

Which is a firing zone. Mostly I walked on the roads, where I could see all the way across the Kinneret's valley. I stopped once at the Jordan, narrow, muddy, and lazy in the afternoon sun, before taking the trail back into the lakeshore, which is more open and developed on the eastern side. Hills to the west blocked the sun until the forest and reeds were shadowed and only the shoreline was lit. A wooden boat passed by a long pier near Capernaum. The tourists didn't see me. I kept going into the evening past churches and compounds until I found a spreading, thorny tree whose branches created a grotto in the hill and camped in the darkening shade.