Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Imagine a thousand bathtubs lined up end to end at the bottom of a canyon

Some empty, some filled with cool green water too deep and dark to see the bottom. 

Now above the bathtubs think of the walls of the canyon - and these are right next to the bathtubs on either side, sometimes slick gray, sometimes craggy and fox-fur tan, sometimes too low to be really walls, sometimes a few meters high, a dozen meters, a few dozen meters high, too high to climb up and too high to climb down.

Now - and for me this is the easy part - above the canyon, imagine the hills, rounded and craggy and fox-fur tan, drier than sand or bones or rock (though you can find any of those in the hills) because this far from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv the rainclouds have, like virtually all previous inhabitants, just given up, it's too big a job, if we leave these alone for just a millennium or two who'll notice really, and maybe they're right because despite their lazy gardeners flowers cover the wadis between the hills, which rise far above the canyon, seven hundred meters' altitude from the highest fox-fur hill to the lowest deep green pool, which if you want my opinion (and I'm afraid that if you're reading this you probably do) is too big for any reasonable person to imagine, so you can skip that, and it doesn't make any difference, because you mostly can't see the canyon from the hills.

OK, you're done.

But maybe I forgot to mention that I went through the hills, into the canyon, which is called Nahal Ashalim, through (mostly) the bathtubs, which are called natural rock pools, filled each winter by the floods, and then through the low dusty slopes, which are called Danger of Land Mines Do Not Leave the Path, and out to the coast, which is called Dead Sea Industries B, because not everything along the Dead Sea is beach resorts or even untamed desert.

Though the desert was pretty untamed. There wasn't even trash, most of the way.

The trail started in the hills, gentle slopes, totally open to the hazy sunlight, and headed into the wadis, sandier and sandier, rockier and rockier, climbing along the canyon walls and then back in, passing small pools. The day was very hot and I considered swimming, but the water was dirty and very cold. The sunlight lit the outlines of the rock and the bottom of the pools only after I'd passed them. I waded through some of the pools and climbed over others until I reached a long, narrow stretch which was flooded with nothing visible. 

At this point you might be wondering what's with all the deep water and why I didn't post any pictures. The answer is that I brought a lot of plastic bags but no camera because I didn't know much about the trail but "swimming necessary" translates pretty easily from Hebrew. A shame I didn't take pictures - except that I tried to wade across that narrow flooded stretch, keeping hold of the rocks on the sides in case I slipped. Slipped isn't quite the right word. I kept my head above water and flopped out of the pool in five seconds, but I don't like suddenly falling into a bottomless pool of water.

After that I climbed over the rock on the sides and avoided future pools. The path joined another trail and continued downstream (I use the term loosely; there was no flowing water within a hundred kilometers) before turning uphill, towards a view of the Dead Sea and a horseshoe turn in the canyon. Pity that I hadn't stayed in the wadi; I could have gone faster, maybe swam across a pool with a little more advance warning, instead of cutting across and having to go down the rocks across from...that's a two-hundred-foot sheer cliff inside the canyon.

Those who at this point still believe that cutting off trail is always a good idea, there's nothing I can do for you.

After scrambling down the rocky hillside (but not the cliff) back into the wadi, I passed many more pools before arriving at a steep rock chute into a deep dark pool. I hadn't forgotten the last time and followed the wadi from the lip of the canyon, below an overhang - like a tunnel, only with the left half missing. But the pools lay one below the other as far as I could see, and the overhang kept getting higher relative to the pools, with no way down, until it vanished. I wasn't stuck, but I had to go back, climb up a bit, and follow the canyon from above its edge, a dozen meters up I think, not in the half-tunnel but on a rocky hill, until I found a tributary wadi to climb down. It wasn't nearly as relaxing as you imagine, and when I finally got back down I was still next to a bottomless pool with no way around, and slipping into the last one I'd tried had left an impression. I am not afraid of water but...

I took a break next to the pool.

I am not afraid of water but...

For a while I just sat there knowing I had to go on.

I am not afraid of water but...

I got into the water very slowly. This time I at least knew not to expect anything under my feet. I let go of the rock, remembered that I actually do like swimming, got my pack (everything in plastic bags), and crossed the cool clean deep green water in a few flailing strokes, climbed out, and kept walking until I had to swim another pool, deep where I got in but ending in a shallow gravel bottom, and another. I don't know how many I crossed, not very many, but enough that I was disappointed when they ended and I emerged from the canyon onto a wide white sand road in the warm evening air of the Dead Sea.

I ran down the road, because I had five or six kilometers and under an hour to catch the last bus, because dusk comes fast, because I wanted to dry off, because it's fun to run downhill alone on a warm evening. The colors darkened in the west, I saw less texture in the dusty white track at my feet, the lights of the Dead Sea Industries shone brighter in my face, I was cold when I took breaks from running, had more trouble reading the Danger Land Mines signs at the side of the path (but read them accurately and stayed on the mine-free road), saw headlights brighter and brighter, and there was the road, I was almost at the bus stop.

I walked by the side of the road on night-black earth which through my sandals didn't feel like earth but something else, for this is the Lake Asphaltis and who knows what lies beneath. Between the dark empty hills and the dark empty waters I saw a light and a sign for buses going north.