14th day (The Crown Jewel)

14th day, 6th leg (the crown jewel)

This is going to be a short blog for a long route.

I was going to name this entry "the missing link" given that we'd decided to skip past it in the summer so that we could come back and do it in a more appropriate season, like spring. In hindsight the decision was the correct one. Today's walk was so striking in so many different ways that it was like the most precious jewel in the collection, the crown jewel.
Essentially Nachal Amud takes lots of features of legs already walked and rolls them up into a 20 km edited highlights. In fact we probably could have saved ourselves 150 km of sweat and a year's full of Fridays and just have done Nachal Amud. But then we would have missed out on all the meals.
So, what did we have today? Let's see. Streams, brooks, a waterfall, a pool, springs and dirty brackish water. A varied array of forests, scrub, weeds, big trees, little trees, evergreen trees, deciduous trees. And wildflowers. Lots and lots and lots of wildflowers. Steep descents, gentle slopes, cliff ledges, scrambling up rocks, descending on our bums, hard walking, good paths and rock-hopping. I could cut and paste the best parts of other walks and end up with this amazing swathe of nature.

In most of the blogs till know I've roughly outlined the route with observations along the way. As I've already mentioned, today's walk compressed lots of what we'd seen already into one walk, so there's no need for me to describe the first part which was highmountain terrain (by Israel's standard at any rate) – see leg 4. Then there was water – see leg 3. And so on. As it is I fear that there's an element of repetition in the blogs, so I won't make that sin here. Anyhow, how many times in one piece can I say "beautiful" , "amazing" , stunning" and "Breathtaking"? I would wear out my thesaurus trying to find ways to describe the varied beauty of today's leg. And if there is one overwhelming observation from today's walk then it is indeed the variety. When you start at 700 metres above sea level and descend to 80 metres below sea level, then it's only natural that in the 20 kilometres of trail you get such a variety of views, terrain, flora and fauna.

Not only did we go back one last time to an area that we had otherwise finished, we were reminded that this area of Israel is relatively untouched in relation to the rest of our squashed up little country. More nature, less humans.  This is a wild, unkempt (but well and freshly marked) trail. There's no settlements, Jewish or Arab, above, below or in front. No dirt tracks that can accommodate buggies or 4*4's. There was no cheating here, no driving as far as we could and then begrudgingly getting out to walk. We saw very few other walkers. A day tripping couple here, some lost Russians there, but for most of the time it was just us and the din of birds chirping. Have I mentioned previously that we like our nature to ourselves? Well we got it today. We were out in nature with no human evidence other than a number of ruined bridges and mills that suggested that in a bye gone era this area had more human activity than today. A welcome regression.

And then there are the wildflowers. I know that in the previous blog I described the impressive array of wildflowers but I think I'm going to have to engage in some creative editing to the previous entry. It was a barren dessert compared to today. There were the vivid colors of the flowers in full bloom throughout the entire walk, sometimes at our feet and at other times like walking through a jungle, a multi-colored head high jungle of assorted flowers. It certainly gave justification to our skipping over this route and waiting to do it at the right time. This time. The perfect weather also added more justification, as if we needed it.

I guess after 35 years and endless hours spent talking about business, career advice, legal advice, advice to the government and to the Palestinians, children, the old days and lots, lots more the inane starts to filter through. How else could you explain the amount of time spent on continuing a subject that we started last time? It arose when Tracey made a comment about the inconvenience of having to deal with nature calling whilst walking through nature. How unfair it is that half the world's population can just stand there and go with the flow, so to speak, whilst the other half have to pull down pants, squat etc etc. I don't think I need to go into more details! So I came up with the idea of a travel penis, a device that can be easily, um, applied, and would save the need to squat. That was last walk. This time we continued to flesh out the idea. Garry, always the entrepreneur, came up with the name…the piss-tool. We may shape it to resemble a hand-gun, though the original and natural penis shape probably has ergonomical advantages .We're going to buy the rights to use the Charley's Angel emblem of 3 silhouetted women holding guns.

Perfect. Maybe the logo should be a water-pistol? In any case if anyone has a better name or marketing idea then send it in. If it's used the sender will receive a free product. At any rate it will go into the pantheon of inventions that I've thought up over the years. By the way, it's my idea and no-one who reads this is allowed to rip it off.

Nachal Amud is roughly divided into 2 sections, the upper and lower. The upper is, as you might expect, quite mountainous. The lower section is largely through a deep dry ravine with lots of caves etched into the walls. In some way it was a bit of a mistake doing the whole nachal in one go. By the time we got to the lower section we were starting to tire and get pressed for time. Nothing you can do about it. We took a day off work so we wouldn't have to worry about time and yet life outside the trail insisted on trying to interfere with our walking, whether it be Yael's swimming lesson that Yoni wanted to be at or my twins' bar-mitzvah lesson that I had to meet them at. So between fatigue and life we appreciated the lower section less and that's a pity. It doesn't have that wild mountain beauty of the upper section but it certainly has a lot to admire. If we'd had time and energy my two friends would have happily sent me exploring one of the caves while they rested, patiently tolerating my love for dank holes. It was not to be, however. In fact, in the end we were so tired, or so anxious to get back to our lives that we didn't even look for the local Abu Abu. And that's a pity as well.