4th day, 2nd leg (cosmic karma)

It's 5.30 friday morning. My alarm goes off and I roll out of bed. This isn't a work day. I'm voluntarily rolling out of bed so that I can go walk 18 km up and down mountains, knowing that in the end I'll feel like double my 49 years. Why the fuck do I do this to myself? Is this really called "fun"? (actually, it is, in a perverse, masochistic sort of way) So at 6.30 we met once again at our regular meeting point, the Segafreddo at Kadarim, had our regular pre-walk caffeine shot and set off for our first real test , our first long walk. I was eager to get past this leg because we'd dodged it for whatever reason and had completed the 3rd leg already. More importantly once we'd put this leg behind us we could tick the box by the Upper Galilee and say to ourselves that we'd finished a defined area of Israel and finished the first part of the shvill. Our next leg is the 4th already, in the Mt. Meron area. We're becoming experienced shvillers
After the usual leaving one car at the end and driving on to the beginning we got to Tel Hai by 7.30 and started off. So far almost all of our shvil encounter has been about nature. Babbling brooks, mountain vistas, scrubby forests etc etc etc. An orchard here and there about man and nature. Today man was going to have a bit more of an influence on preceedings.
The first part of today's walk took us through the Tel Hai sculpture park. True, it was in a natural setting but the reason that the path took us down that way was two-fold. One was to take us past the large sculptures placed around the area, none of which were particularly mind-blowing and the second to make the up-hill that we had to walk just a bit steeper. They succeeded in that. So we straggled up the path from the sculpture park to the scenic road that would be our route for the next 4 hours. Now here lies the crux of the problem. We are walking shvill (path)Yisrael, not kvish (road) Yisrael. Yes, its a scenic route, it is pretty, but its a road. Go back to the first chapter and re-read the part where we hitched a ride because we thought that walking meaninglessly along a road just didn't do it for us. We don't mind huffing and puffing up paths, but doing the same along a road for 4 hours doesn't quite justify getting up at 5.30 on my day off. And huff and puff we did. By definition, mountains are not flat. They go up and down. A lot. So we walked for about 12 of our 18 km along a country mountain road. Yoni was more vocal in his disapproval of the situation (remember, Yoni is the grump of the group), Gary and I were more able to put it into the context of pretty views and "this is part of the shvill and take it as it is" type attitude. As if we needed proof that what we were walking on wasn't hard black dirt but indeed was what the dictionary defines as "road", a convoy of some 30 cars belonging to the Smug Drivers Association of Northern Dimona passed us by, with knowing grins that sort of said "Gee I'm glad I'm in this car and not walking out there on the road." Usually I would have a wry grin and think "Gee I'm glad I'm out here in nature and not looking out at it through a window". Today, in this situation, I'm not sure which grin wins. Anyhow, since cars are bigger and stronger than pedestrians we were forced to stand aside whilst they passed. Hmpf.
After an hour's or so walking we came to a lovely picnic spot called Ein Ro'im, replete with set barbeque spots, lots of shade and empty picnic tables. Please refer back once again to chapter one and note that we can't resist empty picnic tables. This time there was no park ranger to tell us that we had to pay for the right to use the empty picnic table. After a short break and a fascinating conversation concerning the differences between commercially and home grown locquets we hit the road. A bit further along we found what motivated the motorcade to come bother us on this backroad. The Ramim Geological Park. Apparently when this part of the Rift Valley was split open all those millions of years ago it exposed layers and layers of rock that represent a multi-million year history of the area. This geological park explains what rock your looking at and how long its been there all in easily accessible strata. The people visiting the site give new meaning to that fond term of ours...rock-apes.
Along the way we crossed paths with some other shvillers including one particularly sad looking character who was walking by himself. By the look of the amount of equipment on his back it appeared that he was doing the whole shvill in one,2 month go. We agreed that doing the shvill on ones own doesn't sound like much fun, and his demeanour seemed to agree. (So why do it, I dare ask?) Then we crossed paths with another pair of misplaced walkers. An eleven year old kid (or so he appeared) with his 9 year old brother, strolling down this road, in the middle of no-where. The younger one throwing sunflower seeds in his mouth, one at a time, and expertly spitting out the inedible casing, in that unmistakable middle-eastern style. Playing hooky from school, not a worry in the world. No parent in sight. Eventually, a fair way back, we spot mum and dad in the escort vehicle, somehow driving at the same speed that their offspring were walking. So we were starting to see a few more walkers on the trail and were having to share our personal space with cars. At this point we should have realised that today's section was going to be really different from everything else that we'd walked to this point, including pre shvill yisrael walks.

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We noticed that the colors on the trail today were different from 2 weeks ago, largely as a result of the change of season. In late spring in Nachal Dishon there was still water or at least its affects, so there was still the last of the winter green. Here there are no water sources so everything has dried out more. It hasn't turned yet to the grey of Israel's summer, more like a mottled green. There were still lots of flowers in bloom, but not the entire canvasses of spring reds and yellows. Walking above the Hula Valley the views were beautiful but the haze had set in and these beautiful views didn't have the bold contrasts that we'd seen in earlier walks.

Eventually the road and a regular walking track parted ways, with us on the track. Things were starting to feel a bit more normal. We spotted a rather nice , rather large turtle which we decided would become our mascot. No snide remarks please, we're not without a sense of self irony. We passed a nectarine orchard, strong with the sulphuric stink of chicken shit laid down as fertilizer. These were things that we might expect to experience on the shvill.

And then came Barry.

As is the custom and polite social grace (we are, of course, very mindful of our social graces), when you come across another walker you exchange pleasantries; how's it going, how far to go, watch out for this and that. Camaraderie is the word, I think. Added to the shvill camaraderie was the fact that Barry spoke our mother tongue quite well, albeit with a South African accent. The conversation therefore lasted slightly longer than the standard 3 sentences. It came up in conversation that Barry had left his car where he'd started in the same car park as we had left one of our cars, but had no transport at the other end. I have no idea how Barry and Nurit, his partner, planned to get back to their car and I'm not sure that they did either. Anyhow, Barry suggested\asked that perhaps one of us could drive his car up to where they were going to finish, that is, where we started and had left a car. Since we were 3 drivers and we had one car waiting for us at the carpark it was no problem. So he promptly unhooks the key to his Toyota Land-Cruiser and innocently hands it to 3 strangers walking down a path in the Galilean mountains, instructing us to leave the key on top of a tyre, for all to see, in a public parking space. We exchange cell phone numbers and walk our separate ways. Its true, Yoni, Gary and Paul resemble middle aged accountants more than potential car thieves, but still, leaving a 300,000 sheqel motorcar in the hands of total strangers is, well, trusting, at best. But the strangeness had only just begun.

We continued on our tired and merry way. When we met Barry we'd walked about 15 km already, so we had another 3 or so to go and thus were getting pretty weary. Eventually, after 6 hours of walking we arrived to the car park, where we found Paul's Mercedes van and Barry's Toyota Land-Cruiser. However, to my dismay, Paul the fucking idiot, couldn't find his keys. I turned all my pants pockets inside out and in my backpack found crumbs that even mice wouldn't eat, but no keys. Instead of keys I had a knot in my stomach. I'd either dropped them along the way, which was what I was pretty certain had happened, or I'd left them in the back of Yoni's car at the other end, which I was pretty sure wasn't a particularly realistic option, but in this situation you clutch at any straw you can. And then the magnitude of the divine intervention, the hand of God, the Cosmic Karma or the most unbelievable coincidence that even the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy would find too improbable, struck. How is it possible that some bloke who you've never met before and will probably never meet again, on a mountain path, plops into your lap a set of car keys to his luxury car, when at the same time you lose the keys to your own car? If not for this stroke of unimaginable dumb luck then we would have been well and truly shtupped. Left in a car park with a car that we couldn't get into or drive, unable to make our way back to the start to pick up the other car. By the way, if I'm going to beat the odds, then its all the way. The keys were in the back of Yoni's car. That's it. From now on I'm going to lay tfillin and do mitzvahs, say Hail Mary's and go to confession, fast during Ramadan and meditate in the Tantric Buddha style in order to achieve Nirvana. Anything to keep the gods smiling on us as they did today.

Not withstanding that, I could at least pay for lunch at the Blue Bus Hummus joint.