The Start

We met as planned at 8.00 at the seggafreddo at kadarim. Yoni had arrived a few minutes earlier and was having a coffee and reading the paper. He looked up from behind his paper and asked " "how long is this going to take?" in a tone that he might ask his dentist before a triple root canal. Garry and I looked at each other, knowing that a grumpy Yoni is about as much fun as a triple root canal. We explained that according to our research we thought it would take about 5 or 6 hours. Or 3 to 5 years. hmpff.
It appeared logical that if we were going to do all 44 sections of the Israel National Trail (shvil yisrael) then we should at least buy the book. So after a couple of detours and with book in hand off we set to Beit Usishkin at kibbutz Dan, via Tel Hai where we parked my car.
The car park at Beit Usishkin was just that, a car park. I didn't exactly expect brass bands and fireworks but at the start of a trail that winds itself along 900 km from the northern point of Israel to the southern point I somehow expected a little more. There was a small insignificant sign that laconically pointed out that this was the starting point and that was it. In keeping with the inconspicuous sign and Yoni's grumpiness, Garry , Yoni and I simply got out of the car and started walking, which is I guess the idea of the whole thing. To my mind an inauspicious start to a trek that will take us the length and breadth of Israel over a time span of anywhere between 3 and 5 years, depending on who you ask.
Garry by nature is an optimist.A good thing, being an optimist. By his calculation, we will do one section a month as far south as Tel Aviv. Once we're south of Tel Aviv we'll take overnight trips and do 2 sections over a weekend, and an occasional long weekend of 3 consecutive days. By this calculation he thinks it will take us between 3-4 years. To Yoni's and my calculation, we don't do 12 walks a year and we won't be able to do so many overnights as Garry estimates. I figure 44 stages in 5 years is possible, Yoni longer. We'll see.
The first few kilometres were spent walking along a sort of trak. The middle of the trak was a boggy mixture of mud and cow cucky, the sides thorny weeds. We chose the thorny weeds, except when Yoni decided to tangle his legs up with barbed wire and take a dive into the bog. Its good for his complexion. Yoni's legs seem to be a divining rod for barbed wire. If its hidden in a meadow, he'll find it and trip over it.
Eventually the path dried out and we passed alongside flowering meadows and babbling brooks with the snow covered Hermon to our back and the Lebanese border to our side. At one point we
passed over a low gate. The signs on the gate facing walkers that might be walking from the opposite direction stated in no uncertain terms that this was a closed military border area. So the Israel National Trail, marked clearly in orange white and blue, partly goes through a closed military area. Why does this not surprise me? Need I add anything else about Israel, the path or closed military areas?
After another few kilometres of flowering meadows, babbling brooks et.al. the path led us to the gem of today's journey, the Nachal Snir nature reserve. Upon entering we noticed that the ticket office was unmanned, a strange thing we thought for a Friday morning. Maybe he was on smoko.
We'd been walking for a while and the empty picnic tables looked just the spot to have a break. Garry had his Kim's herbal tea, Yoni Tu b'shvat leftovers and I whipped out the muesli bars. Jeeze, we've become positively new age in our old age. Whatever happened to Vegemite sandwiches and a Marlboro?
One of the great things about walking is how time is monitored differently. You don't measure time according to the thing going tiktok on your wrist, but by how tired, thirsty, hungry you are, how high the sun is in the sky, or where there is an empty picnic table.
As we were enjoying the hebal tea (as much as you can really enjoy hebal tea) and natural laxatives the park ranger walks up to us and informs us that we have to pay to use the empty picnic table (no, he didn't really put it that way. We had to pay to walk through the nature reserve). Once we'd finished our morning tea we got up to leave. There was a proposal brought to the quorum that we ignore the fee demand but by democratic debate it was decided that I should go back to the ticket box and pay. The decision was not unanimous and those of you that know Garry, Yoni and me may well be able to guess who said what.
Nachal Snir is one of the tributaries of the Jordan, which can use all the tributaries that it can get after this poor winter. We first walked along wooden platforms slightly raised above the ground so we could say nature at a good sanitized distance. We came to the end of the platforms, ignored a sign diverting us to an alternative path due to flooding and walked confidently to the banks of the river. It was just beautiful.We walked along the banks of the river, sometimes a little lower, sometimes a little higher. At a certain point the path started to go into and through a stream next to the main flow of the river. At first we tried to rock hop but it became obvious to us that in the last years of our 40's we weren't as agile as we once were (of course the cynics amongst us may comment that we were never exactly antelopic) and by trying to rock hop we were more likely to rock slip and end up in the drink. So it was a simple choice walking through the water and getting our shoes and feet rather than slipping and getting fully drenched.
If someone had been spying upon us from a distance they would have split their sides from laughter. The chances of someone, anyone, spying on us from up close or from a distance were pretty close to zero. I had been led to believe that you almost always find other people along the trail. It is, after all, shvil yisrael, the trail that goes the entire country, the kvish 6 of Israeli walking paths. And this was, after all, a beautiful, late winter Friday morning, perfect hiking weather and conditions. But, after all, we didn't see a single other hiker the entire day. Nada. No-one. The only other humans we saw were the park ranger and his deputy who thought all his birthdays had come at once when I came to the ticket box to pay. Oh, and the lady that gave us a lift, but I'll explain that later.
When our shoes had soaked up as much water as they could the path veered away from the stream and we left the nature reserve, vowing to come back with our families. I wonder how many times over the next 3,4, 5 or more years we'll leave a particular section and vow to come back with our families? From the exit to the park we walked down a road then up another as far as Maayan Baruch.From there the path led us through some pretty fields and past the ugliest community development in the prettiest position that you could ever not hope to see. Houses in a pseudo-Greek Mediterranean style, in the middle of the Galilee pan-handle, beneath the snow-capped Hermon, lumped together with as much architectural imagination as the city of Sachnin. Ugh. How could an architect actually think that this is anything less than hideous, and why would anyone even consider buying a house in this monstrosity? Go figure.
Anyhow, this path led to another road which would lead us to Tel-Hai and my car. Now I have no problem prancing through bogs, trying unsuccessfully to keep my shoes dry in Nachal Snir or walking through meadows. When its all in one day, all the better. But I HATE pointlessly walking along roads, even if they do have orange, blue and white markings here and there along the side. Garry and Yoni needed little convincing that this was pointless. So just after our second break, where we sat on the road side at the back of Kfar Yuval like 3 derelicts, I stuck my finger out and this nice lady with a kid in the back picked up 3 middle aged vagabonds and deposited us beneath the car car park of the "Roaring Lion" statue. No apologies for hitching to the end of the first leg of shvil yisrael. It certainly isn't the first, or even the 2nd time we've had to cadge a lift to complete one of our walks.
There are those, principally our wives, who are convinced that the only reason we walk is to justify the meal at the end. The word "only" is superfluous. It would be accurate to say that the meal at the end is part of the walk. The Blue Bus hummus joint in Kiryat Shemona was a fitting end to our first leg of shvil yisrael.