9th day (Femur)

I had mailed Yoni and Garry during the week, warning them that this leg was going to be a long one. I wasn't wrong. I actually think that this walk turned out to be the longest and hardest we've done to date, but like all our walks, full of different experiences from those that came before and no less enjoyable.
The Shvil planners would have us do this leg from the Yardenit baptismal site at 209 metres below sea level to the base of Mt.Tabor at 153 metres above sea level over a 28 km route. 2nd grade maths allows me to conclude that a 362 metre climb over 28 km for 50 year old bodies just does not compute. So instead we found ourselves doing all our normal stuff...driving the first 3 km on road, splitting the leg into the femur and the tibia and to continue the medical metaphor just once more, starting at the hip and working down towards the foot. Even if we "only" did 18 of the 25 km it was the foot that was sore at the end.
Since we weren't walking the entire leg today, we had to find a suitable place to finish today and then start next time, a place that would allow us access from the road to the walking path. The town of Yavniel is reasonably close to the path but the only track leading from there that crossed our path was labelled on maps as a 4wd track. No problem for Yoni's car but my van is definitely not 4*4. I sent another mail warning that we may get stuck even before we started. Thankfully the track turned out to be in better repair than half the roads in Tel Aviv and we easily arrived at the end point to drop off my van .
By 7.30 we had done all the beginning and end car parking arrangements and hit the trail. From the beginning we could see that we have moved into a different geographical area. The 100 km that we've walked until now have been through the Upper Galilee and Galilee Heights which is mountainous and forested to varying degrees. Here we were walking through an open expanse of undulating hills separated by shallow dry creek beds, with the Tabor at our backs the entire time. I may describe the topography as "undulating hills", and that's fine when your driving it. Change up a gear and the motor will easily power you up and over. . The ups and downs of "undulating hills" to a walker are not so easily negotiated. The creeks that run between the hills only run in the winter but colour the landscape with thin ribbons of green that indicate the creek's path. In the Upper Galilee the stream beds are deeper and more densely covered. This area is much drier and reminded us that Israel, apart from the mountainous north, is largely a desert country. And we're no where near the Negev yet. Still, the landscape was quite pretty; a large earth-brown area ribboned by the green strips of creeks beds. As we walked further we occasionally turned back to see the views behind us, with the ever present but shrinking Tabor on the horizon.
Now this is all well and good for the first kilometre, two kilometres , three. As you approach your tenth or twelfth kilometre it gradually doesn't seem so pretty and each hill you have to climb seems like a mountain. Since it was my decision to walk in this direction I had to justify myself to my whinging friends, explaining that we would eventually get to a lip where we would start to drop very sharply. If we'd done it in the other direction we would have to climb a long and very steep path and then go up and down these same hills. Of course when you go up a number of hills you sometimes overlook the fact that each uphill is connected to a downhill and it appears that your only walking up the hills for a long time. Eventually we did get to the lip and when my walking partners saw and then walked the big downhill slope they begrudgingly admitted that perhaps I had chosen the correct direction. Did I mention the word begrudging? Or as Garry put it, it was probably but not certainly the right decision. Semantics. hmph
We were starting to explore new territory and this led to certain feeling of anticipation to today's walk. We're starting to feel that we're making progress. We've passed our first 100 km and now we're in a different geographical region of the country, the Lower Galilee. The Upper Galilee is very much our "home" territory, the region we've been living in these past 25 or more years, done family trips in, walked through prior and during this adventure. Its beautiful and we've never taken it for granted but it is familiar. This area is new ground for us. In all our years in Israel we've never walked through this area and the difference to our "home" area was unmistakeable. We have yet to finish this leg at the Kinneret, but once we do then that's the last we'll see of the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights. The upcoming landmarks are Mt. Tabor and Nazareth. Not for the first time I remind myself that this feeling of having completed a region has one caveat. Nachal Amud. But hey, who's going to let a major long walk that connects Israel's highest mountain to Israel's largest lake via Israel's most beautiful stream get in the way of ticking our boxes?
We weren't alone trudging up and down these hills. This area may be new and unknown to us but it seems that when you buy a new 4wd vehicle in Israel you are encouraged to try it out along the path we walked today. How else could you explain the hundreds of vehicles that passed us en-route?
There are 2 primary seasons for walking the complete trail in one go. The spring, where walkers often start in the south and pass through the desert before it gets too hot and finish in the cooler north by late spring/early summer. The other is the autumn, where the reverse is the case. Starting in the north before the rains and finishing off in the desert which is dry and warm in the winter. We are in the autumn now and true to the theory we crossed paths with many walkers today, more than 20 in my opinion, all walking from north to south. They all looked a bit frazzled after the long climb. Talking about fellow shvillers, there seems to be a new shvil fashion which we didn't see in the spring. Poles. Not people from Poland but strong bits of wood or metal that apparently help you walk and certainly help you look very serious. Everyone had one. Some had two.
There were, however, 3 shvillers that we missed today. And not just any 3 shvillers. Finnish Sonja and her 2 Swedish walking companions. Somehow, somewhere in the blogosphere, Sonja found this blog and embedded it into her blog as part of her bloggish preparations for her conquest of the shvil. As I write these words Sonja and co. are shvilling somewhere in the north of Israel. I thought it would be really cool if perhaps we could either cross paths or even walk a leg together, but it didn't work out. I imagine that Sonja thought that it was really uncool for 3 young Scandinavian women to be seen walking the shvil in the company of three fat ugly middle-aged Australian Israelis. Another possible Seinfeld scene that was never written? Still, its nice that this blog has been incorporated into someone else's.
http://spunkt.wordpress.com/2009/08/
Shvil Yisrael isn't just about walking along trails for 940 km. More than the mechanical\physical process of walking, it gives you along the way an opportunity to experience many different aspects of Israel, a real taste of Israel. Or today, a real smell of Israel. An onion smell. A really foul onion smell. As we approached THE lip that symbolised the end of the up and down hills and the start of the big down we passed by a field full of about 50 Arab workers who were planting onions by hand, one at a time. It was sort of strange to stumble upon such a hive of activity in the middle of no-where. Workers, trucks, taxis to transport the workers, a big tractor and the ubiquitous foreman (slavedriver?) standing around not doing much, cigarette hanging from his lips as if it was an actual physical appendage, all surrounded by an electric fence. The field was almost fully planted and we asked one of the workers how long it's taken them to plant the field. 20 days. 50 workers by 20 days is 1000 work days. Is there no such thing as an onion planting machine that can do the job quicker and cheaper?
Just to add another twist to this somewhat surreal scene, at the far edge of the onion field was a row of about twenty 4wd vehicles and a structure that resembled the Apollo lunar lander. These cars were parked on the edge of the lip that we were about to walk down, no doubt admiring the stunning views over the Yavniel valley that pours into the Kinneret, the Jordan Valley to the south of the Kinneret and the Golan Heights in the not so distant background. The day was very hazy but the views were still stunning. I guess the lunar lander is a viewing platform. Or else NASA have been fibbing to us all these years and Neil Armstrong actually hopped out here, did some strange jumps and spoke heroic words, then pissed off home. It's certainly much closer, less fraught with danger and this area does have a barren moon-scape look to it.
Earlier we found a different slice of Israel at the beautiful Ein (spring) Ulam. After walking through the open barren rocky landscape for the past few hours we suddenly saw this giant Atlantic Oak tree. Here and there we'd seen straggly trees, some of which gave off just enough shadow for us to sit under if we huddled closely together, but no more than that. As we got closer we saw a lovely spring, its waters flowing into a small concrete paddling pool. There were 4 or 5 kids and as many adults splashing in the water and another 4 shvillers looking hot and bothered and wishing that these people weren't there so they could splash around a bit after the long uphill that they'd done. As we passed this idyllic spot we noticed that this giant Atlantic Oak wasn't alone. There was a stand of smaller but still impressive trees. And inside this little patch of heaven were 5 large tents and all the necessary equipment to make a perfect camping holiday. Half naked kids running around with parents sitting around reading books, exploiting the week-long Suchot holiday. Heaven. And here we were, shlepping in the hot sun. At that moment I would have given anything to swap places.
The sun was indeed hot, especially when there's so little shade, but the sun of early October is nothing compared to the baking, evil heat of July and August. There's no doubt that we could feel the change in the weather. A few days previous the first rains of the season had fallen. It was actually quite good rain but not so good that any evidence of it lasted till this friday. The other, very Israeli indication that the summer was ending and we were in to autumn was the appearance of squill. Now what is squill, you ask? I wouldn't have known either had I not looked it up on the internet and translated it from the Hebrew. Actually in Hebrew it sounds better. chatzav. It's a plant of the onion family that flowers in the autumn and in the culture of the Land of Israel, you know, folk culture based on the land and the seasons, heralds the autumn. A bit like the foliage in America or the Grand Final heralding the spring in Australia. And who says you don't learn something reading this blog?
Actually I try to learn something new on each walk. The dumber, more obvious, the better. So this time round it's dumb and obvious and a really good one. Here it is...The amount of water you need when your walking for 5 hours is more than what you need when your walking for 3 hours. Well duh! But there we were, 3 experienced walkers with not a brain-cell of common sense between us, getting back to my van with not a single drop of water left in any of our bottles. We weren't exactly dehydrated but very very thirsty might be an apt description. Towards the end we did get a bit worried about Yoni. I was scared that Garry or I was going to have to sling him over our shoulder and carry him down the hill like a bag of spuds to the car, but he did manage it on his own two legs.
I don't know if it was a result of being under hydrated or what, but the three of us drove back to Yavniel, bought a gallon of water each and decided that we weren't hungry. After 5 hours of walking we'd certainly burnt off enough calories to justify double portions of hummus but we just didn't feel like eating. As if by telepathic command, my friend Fauzzi who lives in the village of Misr, which is a Beduin village about 5 minutes drive from where we'd parked Yoni's car at the start, rang and invited us over. Misr is a quaint, neat little agricultural village, much more attractive than the dirty, ramshackled Arab villages in our area. Bales of hay sit outside houses and there appeared to be as many tractors as there were cars. So after this long walk we found ourselves sipping strong Arabic coffee rather than dipping into our usual post-walk hummus, and it was just right.