31st day (Tea Break Dramas)

If I ever needed proof when I claim that life gets in the way of the shvil, February-March 2011 has given it. The combination of mild weather, fresh green vegetation and blooming wildflowers provide ideal walking conditions. And yet, between trips overseas, children's school trips, sprained ankles and an assortment of other inconveniences, it's been over a month since our last walk and the near future is not so near. Pity.
Even today we couldn't get an overnight in the Negev together, so we sufficed with a one day walk in the Jerusalem Hills. We had hoped that our two guests from the last walk in this area, Mark and Rinat, would join us again today but their lives, in the form of Purim parties, put a stop to that. Pity.
So it was just the regulars, Yoni, Garry, Tracey and I who met up for a double macchiato on kvish 6. By 8 we'd driven 2 1/2 hours to the outskirts of Jerusalem from the north, dropped a car of at the end and fell out of Garry's car at The Sataf, a national park just outside the capital. You can do the maths yourselves to work out what time I had to roll out of bed in order to be ready to walk at 8 a.m. Pity

After the usual indecision as to which way was the right direction we set off. As usual, in the right direction.  Even before we'd managed to warm the muscles we found ourselves dropping steeply down the side of the mountain. I guess it's to be expected that the only way is down when you start on top of a mountain. We'd commented that since we completed the section down Mt Carmel we hadn't done a really hard walk. A long day's walking here, a steep climb there, but nothing to compare to tumbling down Mt Carmel, going up and down mountains around Nazareth or Mt Tabor or the challenges of Nachal Amud. Today's walk also wouldn't make it into the "difficult" list.

Not long after we bottomed out from the descent of the Sataf, the path led us up Mt Tzuba as far as Kibbutz Tzuba which sits on top of the mountain. A good 20 minute pant up the steep hill, a stop at the top for water and to catch our breaths and that was it for physical challenges for the day. From here we crossed the road, entered into Nachal Cisslon and would continue on an easy descent as far as Bnei Brit Caves. From Tzuba you could discern the downhill slope, but the further in to the nachal we went the flatter it got.  The decline became so slight that we'd forgotten that we were in fact descending. Upon passing a group of walkers who were resting in the shade, we exchanged pleasantries which included what a lovely day for walking it was. They answered that it was far more pleasant descending as we were doing, than ascending, their direction of walking. As I said, the slope was so gentle that we didn't feel the descent, but obviously the same slope walked upwards has an entirely different feel.
This gentle slope was in keeping with the general aspect of the area; nothing harsh, difficult or breathtaking, just a pleasant, relaxing forested stroll. A day out. Nachal Cisslon itself is somewhat like a funnel. It is broad and shallow at the top, the area around Tzuba being very open. As we progressed down the nachal it becomes narrower and deeper with higher and more acute valley walls. The Bnei Brit Caves are located in a canyon at the foot of nachal Cisslon, surrounded by sheer walls and mountains.
The only landmark en-route was really quite unremarkable.  Ein Limon is a concrete rectangular spring with dirty smelly water and a dank cave behind it. There are also some unidentifiable ruins surrounding the spring. We would have completely missed it had I not asked my 3 fellow walkers to wait up a bit while I explored the cave. As is usually the case, I explore the cave and they mockingly grin.

As with the previous walk we'd done in this area, up Mt Carmilla and along the Burma Route, we saw many walkers and cyclists of varying ages and shapes. This was not at all surprising given the season and the area. What was surprising was that we didn't see any through-shvillers, given that late winter is prime shvil season.  We did see a group of three girls who looked as if they might be the first shvillers we'd seen for many months, but as we approached and eventually crossed paths we noticed that these girls were missing the unmistakable features of the through-shvillers species.  So how do you tell a shviller from a day tripper? Enormous "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" backpacks is a start. In addition, through-shvillers have a certain ambience about them. It’s a grungy, foot weary yet contented look that comes from being in the great outdoors for a long time and with the knowledge that you're going to be in the same great outdoors for a while yet.  And these girls had neither.

Just because the route had an easy going, early spring feel about it doesn't mean that the day passed without drama. Far from it. Luckily we were merely confused observers to a somewhat surreal theatre. We'd been walking a while, at our usual Olympics training pace, when we came to a junction and a lovely flat grassy knoll, shaded by a large oak tree. We figured we didn't have much more than about an hour's walking till the end and we hadn't had either Garry's herbal tea and chocolate croissants nor our gourmet home-made sandwiches. This was the the perfect spot. Just as we crossed over towards the place where we were about to sit we heard maniacal screaming aimed at us in a language that may have been Arabic but we certainly didn't understand. The din was coming from a lady sitting inside a Bedouin tent adjacent to our tree.  Perhaps she objected to our presence. Perhaps the tree was holy and forbidden for us to sit under. Perhaps she was merely stark raving mad. Eventually what at first sounded like Arabic turned out to be sort-of Hebrew, and we think that she was offering to sell us freshly made pitta breads. We were too scared to refuse yet too scared to approach the mad-woman. In the end we decided that we had enough food and the risk of engaging her in some sort of attempted communication was greater than the risk of insulting her by ignoring her. I'm convinced we made the right decision.

10 metres from where we were sitting, a trio of cyclists rested against a tree. Cyclists have been a common sight so far but this small group was a bit different. Firstly they were all appreciably older than us and we're not exactly yearling lambs. Secondly they all wore the same yellow cycling uniforms, as if they all belonged to the Jerusalem Hills Octogenarian Cycling Club. Thirdly, all their cool looking cycling gear was far too small for them, with their bellies sticking out from the shirts. Now I know that I'm sitting here commenting about others whilst I have more than an extra kilo or two on my frame. For that reason I don't wear body hugging lycra bicycle gear... way too ugly for the innocent observer. It makes you look less sporty, not more. Suddenly, this group was met by another equally aged and only slightly less over-weight trio of cyclists, all dressed in identical red gear, let's say from the Jerusalem Plains Octogenarian Cycling Club. Judging by the body language, these two groups plainly knew each other well, as if they were competitors from rival clubs who had competed so often over the years that they'd become friends.

And now the fun-and-games started.  In general, Arabs don't keep dogs as pets, Bedouins even less. If they do keep a pet, it's usually a scroungy mongrel. So imagine our surprise when enter stage left we saw a small Bedouin girl dragging an enormous dog on a leash. This semi-horse was bigger and stronger than the girl. Two minutes later a middle aged Jewish couple came marching up and demonstratively snatched the leash from the girl's hand and started dragging the dog in a different direction. The girl tried to prevent this from happening but to no avail. The girl's younger brother joined the fray, adding drama and lots of very colorful language for one so young. We didn't need to understand fluent Arabic to understand very clearly what he was saying. The only one indifferent to the action was the dog. He didn't seem to mind who dragged him, which is probably just as well. I wouldn't want to see a dog of that size show it's anger. The young boy was obviously meant to be the family's goat-herd. Due to his lack of attention, the herd of goats sort of ran away. They didn't disperse in all directions but as a flock came to the nearest human(s) they could find, namely us. As we sat under the tree, munching on our sandwiches, watching the drama unfurl in front of us, we were invaded by a herd of goats. We were quietly minding our own business and they just came to us and between us, without fear, as if we weren't there at all. We had in this little scene all the ingredients of a Beckett inspired theatre of the absurd performance;  the din of the mad woman shrieking from the tent, the over-aged, overweight team cyclists, the girl, the horse-sized dog, the Jewish couple and the battle over the possession of the dog and the young boy swearing in a foreign language. And the audience (us) suddenly was thrown into the drama in an unexpected manner. And what do we call this production? Mayhem on the shvil?  Dog Day Afternoon? (with apologies to Al Pacino). I'll be happy to receive other suggestions. The winning suggestion gets free tickets to opening night.

Back to the shvil. Eventually everything calmed down, though I'm still not sure what caused the ruckus and what the final outcome was. At any rate, 5 minutes after we left our grassy patch we returned to usual shvil conversations, which have no usual pattern or topic at all. Barely an hour after we left the commotion of our tea break dramas we were back at the car.

Having eaten merely an hour before we were content to exploit the relatively early finishing time and get home to spend the afternoon with our families, without stopping for lunch. From Bnei Brit caves we drove back to Sataf to pick up the car from our starting point. Just as we were about to split up and head north one of us spotted a small arrow-shaped sign with the silhouette of a goat etched into it and the words "Mt Eitan Goat Farm and Dairy…3km " Well, what's a 3 km detour if we've already driven all this way, I ask? 15 km later (talk about misleading advertising) we arrived to this delightful farm in the middle of no-where. At the end of a winding dirt road, it is surrounded by forest, tucked into the side of the mountain. It has the unmistakable smell of goat's pens and a slightly hippy atmosphere that you might expect from a place so far from civilization. There was nothing hippy (or low-fat) about the cheeses however. We bought a delicious cheese platter that consisted of a combination of hard, matured cheeses, fresh cheeses, feta and ripened camembert style cheese, served with homemade bread.  I re-iterate. We weren't hungry before we ordered the platter. We were full by the time we stuffed the last morsel of cheese into our mouths. We've never claimed that we have to starve on the shvil.