Nahal Ammud

Today I went hiking in the Upper Galilee.  It was amazing.  It's a place with very little Biblical significance, so I hadn't been there.  It does have significance to Jewish mysticism, but our reason for going there was simply for pleasure.  We started up near the top of Nahal Ammud and hiked some distance down it.  There was some scrambling in a couple areas, but in general it was pretty easy, as far as hiking goes.  It was beautiful, though, and also mostly deserted except for us, which was nice.  I don't think I've ever seen that many wildflowers in my life - they carpeted the hill sides: lovely sights for the eyes and sweet smells for the nose. :)

Here are some examples of the scenery we saw.  

Yes, they had cows.  They were cute and I talked to them.

Prickly but beautiful thistles.  

Also very cute tadpoles.  

These were some of my favorite flowers because of their variety of color.  The same plant could have flowers with colors ranging from purple to pink.  

Barbed wire! :)

It was a wonderful day, really.  It was nice to get out of town and have a bit of a break from school.  

Today for Jews was a special blessing of the sun.  I think the words they use for that blessing are fitting to end with:

"ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם עושה מעשה בראשית"

"Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the Universe who makes the works of Creation."

Nahal Yehudia

Today I got up a couple minutes after 6:00am and prepared to go on a hike. We got on the bus shortly after 7 and drove down the Ascent of Adumim to Jericho and then up the rift valley to the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights. Nahal Yehudia is one of many valleys that drains into Galilee.

I must admit that I was rather nervous about this hike. For one thing, I kept waking up last night, afraid I had missed the bus or something. For another thing, I had heard horror stories about how hard it was and how much water we would need and all that. I am probably not the most out-of-shape person here, but I'm definitely not in as good of shape as many other people...and I didn't want to hold the group back. As it turns out, though, my fears were for naught.

Approximately 90% of the hike was downhill. The last 10% was intense, but not that long and therefore not that bad. We started at the top and walked down to the first pool and waterfall. Most of the group swam around and jumped off a 20-30ft cliff there into the water. I was in more of a hiking mood than swimming mood (and I don't like hiking wet when I don't have to), so I didn't get it. I headed off to the second pool with one of the first groups to leave. At the second pool we had to climb down a ladder next to the waterfall and then swim across the pool to reach the trail again. Because of that everything we were carrying was likely to get wet, so I didn't bring my camera. A few other people did, though, so I'll try to steal pictures at some point so y'all can see what it was like.

From there on out I ended up with a small group that included Cindy (who teaches one section of the Geography class), Brad and Shalon (a married couple, he's here for a year and she's auditing a couple classes), and Tiffany (the wife of another grad student). Since there were about 40 people on the hike, it was kind of nice to be able to just concentrate on a smaller group. It was also nice because we were all a little older that the majority of the students here. We did the whole "loop." Most people (I think) only went to a couple pools and played around in them before hiking up the side of the nahal. We went farther down the canyon, ended up having to swim through one more pool, and then climbed up the side. It was pretty amazing. Let me try to describe it a little.

The region of Galilee in general is much greener than Jerusalem, but the area on top where we started was still fairly brown. We had to walk for a few minutes before we were close enough to look down into the valley (it's pretty narrow and steep). As we looked down we could see a line where the brown changed to green, though we couldn't see any water at that point. We started hiking down into the green shortly after that.

The bottom of the nahal is a verdant jungle. (I've been wanting to use the word "verdant" all day.) It reminded me a little of Zion national park, for those who have been there. I'm generally unable to tell you the species of the flora and fauna were, though I did recognize bamboo and mint in the flora category. I even chewed on a mint leaf! At any rate, it was beautiful and lush and green (with flowers sprinkled here and there). I can't tell you how many times I longed for my camera. As far as fauna goes, I saw two small crabs, a fairly large lizard, a frog, and lots and lots of fish. The first fish I noticed were in a pool I was wading in. They were about the size of minnows, but not nearly as skittish as minnows generally are in Montana. They didn't seem to have any problem with my presence. From there on out I noticed fish of all sizes in the various pools we saw. Some were probably close to 2 feet long, which is especially impressive considering the size of the stream. Other than some large pools, there really wasn't much water flowing. The stream could almost be leaped across at most points. (I couldn't leap across, but probably someone more athletic than I could easily jump that distance.)

The last part, the hike out of the canyon, was pretty tough. It reminded me of Montana -- it even had a small basalt boulder field to climb over! It really wasn't that long, though, so I can't complain. Then we walked back on the road (slightly up hill) to where we had left the bus. All in all, an amazing day, especially after the fiasco yesterday.

To top it all off, when we got back on campus we had falafel for dinner! Yum!

In other news, I have about a trillion and three bug bites all over my body. I've had some for quite a while, but they seem to have multiplied in recent days. I think bugs sneak in my window at night to bite me.

In other other news, I have my first test tomorrow, so I probably should start studying. :)

Here's a couple pictures I found online to give you an idea of what it looked like. :)