12th day (Unfinished Business)

In October we did a long, hard, hot and thirsty leg that finished just outside the township of Yavniel. (See 9th leg to refresh the memory). It may have been long, but the entire length of that particular leg was even longer, about 27 km. Too long for us in one day. So we decided that a short easy leg, about 9 downhill kilometres, that would complete the three quarters of the leg that we'd already done,  was just what we wanted for today. In retrospect, I wouldn't describe it as an arduous trek, but it wasn't quite the hop, skip and a jump that we thought that we'd be doing. I'm not going to embarrass myself by implying that it was a hard walk if Yoni's 9 year old daughter, Yael, walked the walk without as much as a whimper. No, no,no, a nine year old, no matter how tough she is, is not going to tough me out. I will say, however, that I really enjoyed having our guest 9 year old walker with us today.

What did make today's walk harder than what it may ordinarily have been was the week's torrential rain which added water to places where there isn't usually water and mud that was heavy, thick, gooey and slippery. Especially slippery. Each one of the four of us, on at least one occasion, found himself on his bum when a split second earlier his legs had been attached to the ground. Even the usually nimble Garry took a fall or two. I think Yael was probably the sturdiest of us all.
Today's route had us starting by descending a ravine that would lead us into the valley of the Yavniel stream. This un-named ravine wasn't exactly the Grand Canyon but if steep walls, rockhopping and descending cliffs comes to mind, then you're about right. Now that's all well and good for us oldies, but 9 year old legs are substantially shorter than our 50 year old ones and there were a couple of occasions when we had to lower Yael down a cliff face. This operation consisted of Garry being at the bottom, me holding her as I lowered her down to him and Yoni having a nervous breakdown, hoping that we wouldn't drop her or that Sigal wouldn't find out what he was doing with their youngest daughter. It was only after we got to a cliff that looked really impassable that we realised that we hadn't seen a trail marker for a while and perhaps there was an alternative route. Sure enough we found that the trail actually went above the ravine and the shvil painter wasn't about to try scaling cliffs, with or without 9 year olds in tow. The trail passed through the meadow above for a bit and rejoined the ravine when the escarpment was much less steep and descent was over rocks, not cliffs, easily managed on our bums

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The marked path has crossed a few strange obstacles in the 140 or so kilometres that it's covered so far (Remember that the path had us walk through a closed military zone on our very first section) but this was the first time that we'd had to pass under an electrified wire in order to continue. Whether the sign on the wire was a bluff or not no-one was game to find out, but if the wire intended to keep cattle out of the area then I imagine that there may have been a few volts running through it. I imagine that you would need a lot of volts to keep cattle from crossing the wire .In any case cattle don't read so well and are not so bright as to contemplate the possibility that its a bluff.
Once we'd successfully ducked under the hotwire we quickly came out to a wide muddy path that ran adjacent to the Yavniel stream. The nachal is usually dry but was running very fast due to the rains. We found a nice spot not far from the water to sit and drink Garry's herbal tea, made all the more herbal by the wild mint that we picked along the way. After the break we continued down this path. It was a pleasant walk, the winter green now very deep. The wild flowers are starting to bloom already, so the green fields were sprinkled with yellows, whites and reds. Its not quite the high season yet but our next walks,

including nachal Amud next month, will have increasingly spectacular wildflower displays. The walking today was made more challenging by us having to look very carefully where to put our feet. The right hand side of the path was bordered by a single, familiar wire, one which we didn't want to touch under any circumstances. This proved to be quite a job at times since along the path there were numerous puddles of unknown depth or mud patches that would have made the most spoilt pig very happy . The left hand side was not always passable. We didn't see any spoilt happy pigs, nor did we see many cows, which usually pop up when walking through the countryside. We did see however two young bulls, their, ahem, bullness being obvious for all to see (When you got, flaunt it, I guess) The conversation between father and 9 year old daughter went something like this:
Yael: Daddy, what are those on the cows?
A pregnant pause. 9 year olds don't give up when you ignore their questions.
Yael (in a more insisting tone): Well Daddy, what are those on the cows?
Yoni: You know, Yael, beitsim. It's a bull, not a cow. (For those that don't speak Hebrew, beitsim literally means eggs but is the common word for testicles, much like "balls" is the common word in English)
Yael: Beitsim?
Yoni: yes, you know what they are.
Yael: (In a tone that is half knowing and half confused) Ah, like what we have for breakfast with our toast.
At this stage Yoni didn't feel the need to further Yael's education in the field of anatomy. Her time will surely come.
We came to a point where the road forked and it appeared that the right way was to go down the path that crossed the gushing stream. There were some rocks that we might have been able to use as stepping stones, but failure, which was a distinct possibility, would have had us swimming with the turtles that we'd seen here and there. So we decide to simply wade across the stream. The current was swift but not more than knee deep. We planned to either pass Yael from hand to hand across the stream, or one of us would piggy-back her. She was having none of this. She wasn't going to miss out on the fun of getting her feet wet. So there we were, playing adult and stupidly tip-toeing across the stream and trying not to get our feet wet, which was of course an impossibility in knee deep water and there was Yael, looking at the situation for what it was. Fun.

This path turned out to be the wrong path although not by a lot. After a few kilometres of us knowing only approximately but not exactly where we were, (not uncommon with us) it rejoined the marked shvil yisrael path.The only problem was that this path was sodden. We had to decide whether to walk through thick squishy mud, puddles whose depth we couldn't gauge or swamp. There was very little solid ground that was "safe" to walk on and zero dry ground. Certainly there was no "right" way through. So what would probably have taken us an hour or so under normal conditions took us well over two hours. There's no way of knowing if the alternative marked path would have been any better but an uneducated guess would have me believe that it wouldn't have been. This continued on for a few kilometres and by the time we got to Sigal's car we were covered from head to toe in thick gooey mud. This is not a printing mistake. Yoni donated his car to his oldest daughter Lior for the day, so he was driving Sigal's car. Fine. Maybe. Garry and I have known Sigal almost as long as Yoni has known her, and the three, no, four of us knew that returning Sigal's car to her with even a little bit of mud in it would not be greeted with widespread approval. I think the word "divorce" was uttered under breath. Luckily, or cleverly, Yoni (or Sigal) had large garbage bags in the boot of the car. Yoni took his shoes off and threw them into a bag and into the boot, and drove the car in wet socks. We wrapped our legs into the bags, pulled them up as high as we could and sat in the car like cocoons. I have a feeling that Yoni and Yael went home via the carwash.
When we'd finished a previous leg (7th day) at more or less the same finishing point we'd eaten lunch at the Uggata coffee shop, which was ok. We wanted to broa den our culinary horizons so were recommended a place at kibbutz Degania bet. Firstly we were too embarrassed by our filth to even try to go into the coffee shop. Hunger overcame embarrassment but the place turned out to be a chocolattier which made fine hand made chocolate but didn't serve food. Perhaps Yoni should have bought Sigal some fine hand-made chocolate to soften the dirt of the car. Anyway we got to Tzemach junction and found a generic middle eastern meat-on-the-grill restaurant which usually have poor hummus, soggy chips and expensive tourist prices. To our surprise the place had good hummus, crisp chips and expensive tourist prices.