A Long Egyptian Dream

I am accumulating scars like no other. Somewhere between being eaten alive by Red Sea coral and scaling up 20-foot Nabataea rock faces, I have decided it is utterly futile to try to keep them at bay. I have just arrived to Dana Nature Reserve, in Southern Central Jordan, near the Israeli border, after an incredibly overwhelming past week that has spanned the likes of the Arava Desert in Israel, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and Aqaba, Petra, and Wadi rum in Southern Jordan. I have currently stopped for a breather, and am sitting atop the Dana Tower Hotel, on plush tapestry cushions, overlooking a valley (Wadi Dana) a precipitous three thousand feet below me. There's a sign to my right that tries to get at the vibe of this place, which is like a Middle Eastern version of the Weasley house (sorry non Harry Potter fans), "Welcome tower Hotel the home and paradise of back packers. you enter as guest, you leave as friend".

The last week on the Kibbutz was bittersweet. I had started to become attached to the whole scene, waking up for communal breakfast at the Chadar Ohel, chatting there with sleepy volunteers, perky Kibbutz families, and professors from the institute. Doing work in the morning, coming back for the yogurt, humus, tchina, fresh vegetable lunch, relaxing in the midday heat until an afternoon class, and socializing and chilling the rest of the evening. In the last week, I really started to talk more with the remaining interns and students from the spring semester, a lively, fascinating crew. There was my 30-year-old water resources professor, Osama, a Palestinian living in Jordan and doing his masters on regional water use, who introduced me to all sorts of incredible Arabic music, brought a huge nargila (hookah) to our overnight camping trip in typical Middle Eastern fashion, was as likely to break out into Shania Twain songs as Jewish Shabbat prayers or beautiful hymns about yearning for the Palestinian motherland, taught me a Jordanian version of sesh besh (backgammon), and was always willing to answer my myriad question about the conflict. And then Moishe, a program associate at the Arava, who drove us to and from us endless destinations, with a big hearty laugh and excellent music taste (in terms of familiars, the likes of Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, and Santana) and on coming back from one trip detoured to stop at a sweet record shop where I could buy awesome Israeli music for as cheap as six bucks (30 shekels) a CD. My academic director, who joined our camping trip, to smoke some hubbly bubbly, and was an excellent sport when I cleaned him out at Texas Hold Em. Etan, an incredibly friendly ex-soldier, who leads solo trips into the desert wilderness, and spent an evening talking to me about the stars. I had also become really close to several girls on my program, in particular a Marin, a New York Jewish girl who was absolutely hysterical company. The last several days were particularly tough, a combination of very little sleep (I averaged about four hours) as we tried to cram in as much fun time together as possible, and heavy-duty field work in the blazing heat (gardening, weeding, mud building, etc.) I must say, manual labor in the extreme desert is not for the weak of heart. Several times, my five sleep-deprived fellow students and I, thought we were certainly tottering on the brink of senseless, delirious-laughter insanity. After a particularly raucous bout of giggles, as the girls and I were picking Neem leaves in the sustainable orchard, our supervisor asked if I was alright and sent me to the shade for ten minutes to drink water.

After the program ended abruptly on the morning of Friday, July 24th, I had had all sorts of grand delusions that with only a light backpack I would go traveling solo into the great unknown of the Arab world. Unfortunately, I kept meeting dynamic fellow travelers who insisted on accompanying me. The first of such was a friend from the Kibbutz, an Israeli Dutch (yes, I too did not know they came in that combination) banker-cum-wanderer who proposed a weekend in Sinai. Not in my schedule per se, but hey, my grandmother is half-Egyptian, so I figured why not, I always could chalk it off as some janky re-connecting with my long-lost roots. We were an interesting travel pair, as he ended up being as spacey as I am, though with better skills (a.k.a. fluent in more than just one language...the banes of American education). Getting to Egypt Friday morning was a ceaseless comedy of errors, from which I fortunately learned early on, that the best way to travel through the Middle East is to abandon all hope that anything will get done. We arrived at the Israel, Sinai border and passed through the Israel ports quite quickly, after paying a hefty exit tax, and coming to the drastically erroneous conclusion that the whole process would be relatively painless. After walking into three entrances, instead of exits, we were firmly guided to the actual border patrol line, in a hot air-con lacking, packed, crowded room in the stifling midday heat. We waited in a long, long line for what seemed like an endless time, until we finally reached the stamping window, only to be asked for our immigration cards and discover that we had not filled them out. Back, back to the back of the line we were told in a screaming English/Arabic hybrid with many strong accompanying gestures. We had the good luck of queueing behind an enormous group of travelers from India, and it was another thirty minutes before we were back at the ticket window, overly eager to hand our passports to the customs officer, only to have him stand up abruptly and say he'd be back in five (you guessed it, it was more like 45 minutes). Then, past several more passport checks, and straight into an influx of taxi drivers, all insisting simultaneously and loudly that we get in their cab. We consented to one guy, who said he would take us for 10$ a head, a huge rip off but we were in no mood to argue. It ends up by 'take us' the man really meant, have us sit in the overheated taxi for an hour and a half as he futilely waited for other tourists to fill up his van and make his trip worthwhile. Only when, entirely fed up, did we honestly threaten to walk the 40 kilometers rather than wait another minute in the parching heat, did the driver acquiesce to leaving, though charging us another 5$ a person for the inconvenience.

We were enjoying pulling away from the border, watching camels just chilling on the roadside, when our car was stopped to collect a"tourist tax:. It sounded sketch, and the price was steep (100 lira, 20$ per). Moment of semi-panic as this unexpected tax cleaned us both fully out, but the driver assured us he would stop at a cash machine before our final destination. The drive down the coast was absolutely stunning. After 10 km or so of some Marriot-type development, we were zooming down a desolate desert highway that ran parallel to the red sea, with giant, crumbling granite mountains to our right, and the Jordan and Saudi Arabian coast to the East. The whole land was desolate...sand, stones, sun, and the occasional Bedouin man or woman, in full-length black robes, walking a lonesome camel, laden with colorful scarves, down the empty road. There were some, far and few between, outcrops of houses and building along the Sinai coast (the real estate was too prime to be completely undeveloped), but they were all small-scale, made of local materials like sand bricks, stones, with rounded arches, open doorways, circling outdoor stair cases, white washed adobe walls, niches, colonnettes, domes, towers, and colored stones that accentuated, not blighted, the landscape. We passed by tall mountains, hidden alcoves, single huts nested in mountain crevices, and Bedouin encampments (Haiyma) made of tattered cloth and tarp, blowing in the wind.

We pulled into our destination, a semi circular beach, dappled with small straw-roofed huts and with its namesake Devil’s Head rock. I jumped out of the car, immediately taking off my shoes to inquire about an ATM, the negation of which the simplicity of the place belied. I hopped back in the van, with no alternative than to travel an additional 20 km south to Nuweiba (never saw the shoes again). It was a nearly abandoned port town with several stops where we got money and bought a drink. It must have been quite the site, I the only woman in view, the two of us the only tourists in several weeks, and all the men chilling, watching TV., smoking Nargila, and joking in a relaxed, lackadaisical fashion. We were easily persuaded by a very cute young man that Yoni was in dire need of a haircut, and I spent the next two hours chatting with the owner of the shop in (admittedly terrible) Fosha (classical Arabic) about politics, and Obama’s speech at Cairo. Many, many hours after our intended arrival time, we rolled up to our destination.

The pace at which the rest of Egypt had been moving was warped speed compared to the rhythm at the Devil’s Head. The first night, it took over four hours for us to get to our room, probably near on two to get our meal, but only several seconds before we realized that all pretenses of efficiency were completely disregarded and that that was totally chill. There were circular shaded areas, with low lying pillows and lower tables, scattered around; hammocks, dream catchers, and paintings swaying in the sea breeze. Groups of friends sat around straight chilling, wondering amidst a languorous stupor whether it was worth walking 10 m to the sea to cool off. You’d catch bits of conversations in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, French, occasional bouts of laughter, and snippets of music (whether it was the melodious singing of the Bedouin working in the adobe kitchen, someone mindlessly tapping to an unheard beat, or the lazy strum of a guitar). I couldn’t even really tell you what it was we did for the two full days we were there. We talked to some people (including awesome Bedouin waiters who’d come by to chat, bring tea, or share a smoke), went swimming in the Red Sea once, played a couple games of sesh besh…but mostly it was just watching people watching you, and watching the shifting landscapes: the dancing sky dense with twinkling stars, the red sand red sea and red mountains of red hot midday, or the pastel-hued waters and lavender, baby blue, and pink hills at sunset. Everyone seemed to have completely lost track of time, and no one missed it in the least. Going back to the border two days later felt like waking up from a very long intoxicating dream.

Powder Bowls and the Wisdom in Animism

Tomorrow morning, we take a hiatus from the 'forgotten part' of Israel to visit some slightly more well known places for several days (Jerusalem...) and then have a couple free days until Sunday. As it just so happens that my mother's entire family (well, not ALL of them, she does have 62 first cousins) are in Israel right now, I'll get to kick it with them. Lots to write about before I go (though I couldn't possibly mention everything), so here goes...

We spent Friday morning in a playground. Six students, several interns, and the eternally reliable Moishe piled into one of the community vans for a long schlep to Kibbutz Lotan, a kilometer down the road. (Kibbutzim have warped geometry, our three minute commute to the dining hall is a serious inconvenience and by Kibbutz time we've been living here for near on three months). Lotan is engaged in an ongoing 'creative ecology' game. The rules of the game: What if there is no trash? Alex, a rejuvenated ex-New Yorker who moved to the desert 30 years ago and has never looked back, is the referee. He took us to a grove of circular mud benches, shaded by a canopy of leaves, to explain a bit about the Kibbutz, and one of the benches was peeling, exposing the car tire backing. Aha! So that was how you played! He took us to the coolest playground I've ever seen...igloos, large turtles, slides, mushrooms, life-sized chess games, climbing trees, bird feeders, all mud, all polychrome, all with trash inside and inlain glass windows to see it ("time capsules" Alex called them). After that, it was a brief tour of the adobe buildings, all equipped with state of the art passive cooling and heating systems (a.k.a. thick, mud walls), two tiered roofs for cross breezes, south facing windows for winter sunlight, and top-of-the-line outdoors climate regulating porches (a shady hat of palm tufts encircling the house).

Trash piles as play structures? That was just the first of a series of entirely non-obvious uses for normal things. Starting with, human waste. Alex had us smell a handful of fresh, wet dirt (a rarity in the desert), and then explained the composting toilets (no flush, you pour saw dust instead) and on-sight fertilization of human waste that ends up creating in six to eight months (yup, as you might imagine) the soil we were holding in our hands. (In response to several grossed out glares from the Marc Jacobs clutch carrying New Yorkers, he assured us that the Ministry of Health has come to triple check it was ghiarrdia-free). What's another entirely obvious use of human waste that Lotan has engineered? Bird reserves. They pump black water through a "hydroponic plant horizontal subsurface flow" that essentially uses the nutrients from human waste to grow a swamp (sorry, "constructive wetlands") as pit stops for migrational birds, and gray water, entirely suitable for irrigation, flows out the other end. (Also extensively tested by the Ministry of Health). And what about cow farts from the dairy farm? Use the methane for biogas energy (a study being conducted by a student from that 'other' college in Cambridge). Hmm, what about excess cooking oil? Lather it onto the adobe building to make them rain-proof. No but really, what to do about that infinite stretch of sand? Hand mix it with some water and straw, carve it with blocks into bricks, leave it to bake in the sun, and several days later (as we did) come back to make ovens and fire up a batch of delicious lemon-poppy seed cookies. (I'm making an oven as soon as I get back to p.a., though I'll be sure to leave the pizza-cooking up to someone else).

It was a weekend of good cookies (there are no trans fat or high fructose corn syrups in any of the weekday meals, and the sweet tooth inside me has been seriously suffering). But luckily, Shabbat dinner came with desert (though my Muslim Jordanian buddy had to kindly remind me to say the Jewish prayer for bread before scarfing one down...oh the ills of cross-cultural understanding). Saturday afternoon, a Kibbutz family hosted three of us students for an afternoon of home hospitality-chatting and (much to my delight) baked goods. That was where I really learned how truly abysmal the US educational system is. I mean, I went to one of the (self-proclaimed) 'best' school districts in California, I go to a relatively good school, and I consider myself to be moderately well-educated, especially in comparison to some eight year old kid living on a Kibbutz in the middle of the desert. Well, little Razi starting talking to me in English (it really could have been my language of choice, he's also fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, and French) about his latest science project, a Ruben's Tube, a perforated pipe with a drum head at one end and gas piping at the other. He was shocked I'd never seen one, don't you study physics he asks? So he explains; he lights it up, and flames burst out of the holes and when he plays a musical frequency at the drum-head end, sound particles bounce down the tube and the differing air pressures cause the fire to make a wave pattern. O right...clear as day... (I read up on it that evening, wondering all the while, why the hell didn't I get to play with fire in my physics classes?)

Sunday (Israeli Monday) was without a doubt, the coolest day here so far, rife with archeology, animism, anarchism, and a fair amount of dune surfing. We had class bright and early Sunday morning (particularly early considering the big Saturday night) and I grabbed a big mug of coffee--mentally steeling myself for four and a half long hours in a plastic chair listening to our 60 year old Prof wearing Lincoln-Road worthy shorts talk about neolithic sand dwellers in the region... He started by expounding some dense archeological theory, developed by some hoity-toity British smuts that based on the Arava's hyper-hyper-aridity index (yes, as we've heard from approximately twenty professors and extrapolated from perpetual dehydration and sun burns, this is in the Xtreme desert) and a slew of archeological studies, that this region is a "no man's land", with civilizations that were "short lived and passing phenomenon" populations that were "hungry, and perpetually on the verge of death" characterized by intermittent, transient settlements and long gaps in the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Early Bronze II, EB IV...yawn, I was trying my very best to keep a minimum of one eye open. WRONG, WRong, wrong, I woke up abruptly. "I don't know where they got this data" Dr. Uzi Avner says, and goes on to talk about the hundreds (no, that is not an exaggeration) of sites that he has excavated in the Uvda Valley, part of the 2000 ancient finds in the 10 percent of the region that they have gotten around to surveying. It ends up the Southern Negev has been populated consistently for over 8,000 years, a hot spot of copper and gold, a pit stop for Saudi caravans traveling North to barter their goods on Mediterranean shores, and a religious and cult site for all manner of polytheistic religions.

Really? People living in this barren, harsh environment 6,000 years before Christ? I can't even stand outside, braced by a.c. and lathered in sunscreen, for more than five minutes between the hours of ten and two, much less do anything constructive. But apparently people have been living here successfully for millenia; Domesticating plants and animals and living in family units of up to 80 people as early as the 7th century b.c.; Building corrals, plowing crops, grinding grains, threshing wheat and storing it in silos in 4000 b.c. (the earliest evidence of many of these agricultural methods found thus far in the WORLD--it took years to convince archeological skeptics of the validity of the finds); Developing several thousands of years old sophisticated run-off farming techniques that comprise a series of massive, slightly angeled terraced dams and soil embankments (quite a feat for an "ephemeral" "moribund" (non) civilization to erect). The dams and embankments mitigate water flow, prevent erosion, and cause healthy, nutrient-rich soil to accumulate and are, in fact, so effective and environmentally conscious that current policy makers are considering implementing exact replicas through-out the country; Establishing, near the Timna copper mines, the first sites (circa 5000 b.c.) of copper smelting, an incredibly complex chemical process that combines 150 kilos of charcoal, 50 kilos of mined copper, 100 kilos of crushed iron oxide flux, and seven hours of laboratory-like intensive work to produce 1.7 kilos of pure, sales-worthy copper (and that doesn't even include the molding). The list goes on and on and on...apparently the ancient cultures here were so skilled in geology, metallurgy, and agriculture that when the highly-touted sophisticated Egyptians came on the scene and 'conquered' the area (in the relatively recent 1000 B.C.) not only did they borrow all the shafting, smelting, etc techniques and replicate them at home, but their gods were placed in subservient positions in local temples (Uzi himself was the first to excavate a temple of this kind and kick start archeologists' re-evaluation of the power relations between these local people and the so-called superior Egyptians).

It was an entire morning of upending conventional wisdom, and just when I thought it was simply no longer possible for Uzi to shake us up anymore, he started talking about the spiritual, cultic practices of the ancient desert peoples. As early as 7,000 B.C. ancients began erecting

stone alters, alternating broad/flattish stones and tall/thinninsh stones in groups of 1,2, 3, 5, 7, or 9, conspicuous landmarks dragged hundreds of kilometers across barren deserts to be placed in particular locations. Not so impressive perhaps. So he starts delving into the extensive tradition (in everything from Indonesian, to ancient Egyptian, to Christian Byzantines cultures) of representing fertility-inspired, broad female goddesses flanked by thin, phallic-like male gods in stone carvings, hieroglyphs, paintings etc. So were the desert cultures just preempting this tradition, but in a crude, simplistic, pre-technology form? (For the stones are non-hewn, taken directly from nature). Not entirely...when you start reading the first written texts in the region, passages such as "if you use a chisel upon it you profane it" abound (exodus 20:22, but there are also nubian and pre-islamic arabic texts on the same subject), and there ARE examples in the region of "sophisticated" alter sites, with hewn, figurative stones, but only the very oldest of shrines have them. So, what's Uzi's interpretation of these peoples' spiritual beliefs after many decades of studying their alter sites, their related sacrificial items, and their symbiotic, light-living reverent symbiosis (in mining, agriculture, etc) with their local environments? That for the desert people it was impossible for them to fashion images in the likeness of gods, for the gods have made us, not vice versa. That for the desert people, the gods are the source of all the creativity, resources, and landscapes and in that in order to live peacefully and successfully in the desert, they had to be sensitive, tuned in, and cognizant of their surroundings and environment. Maybe (minus the whole religious thing) not a bad lesson for modern civilization to pick up on.

There really have been too many chill things going on here to even skim the surface. One of the highlights was the night before the full moon, the Kibbutz arranged a bus to take us out to some sand dunes in the Uvda valley (near all those archeological sites). We hiked around a bit, watched a gorgeous sunset, howled to the rising moon (I'm being somewhat facetious), and then ran down dunes of the finest, softest sand I've ever imagined. They feel like silk, when you walk through them you sink knee deep, and running, rolling, cartwheeling, flipping down them was as sublime as an epic bowl of fresh powder. In other highlights, we've discovered that a population of kittens (who knew that was possible?) live under our house. They are absolutely adorable but nastily feral (we saw one running around with a gerbil this afternoon and when we walked in its direction, it snarled). Also, last night I chilled with some volunteers, one of whom's dad is visiting, and he picked up a guitar and started playing a mix of buffalo springfield, dylan, neil young, and grateful dead as other kids piped in with guitars, harmonicas, or, as in my case, simply voices.

Life here really is different. There still are remnants of ancient ways of life threaded into people's daily fabric. We went hiking yesterday in the Kibbutz "backyard", with an archeologist who pointed out rocky outcrops from thousands of years ago, and several kilometers down the way, a square rock Berber-style hut fashioned by the local kids as a long-term project for halcyon summer days. During a lecture on desertification, our professor was telling us about several years ago, during the peak of the Darfur crisis, when he was training for a long-distance run with a friend of his near the desolate Egyptian border, and they left a package of dates and two water bottles by the side of the road for substinence on the way back. Mid run, they saw a truck in the distance, stuffed to the brim with Somalian refugees, illegally crossing the border. They hid until the truck had passed, and decided to cut their run short, figuring the indubitabley famished, parched refugees had snatched their snack. When they returned to the road, they found that exactly half the package of dates and one water bottle had been consumed. The rest was left untouched. It's the law of the desert--if you come across a man's food and water, you must leave him exactly half so he can get home.

A Desert with Salvia and Shells

I was sitting for dinner in the Chadar Ohel (dining hall) this evening with five fellow girls at the institute, and we were joined by a couple of the volunteers. The volunteers are a mixed lot, living on the Kibbutz for anywhere from a month to several years, and are as diverse as transient traveling workers and soul-searching ex-bankers. The Kibbutz provides them with several hours of work, something like laundering and washing dishes, and the rest of the day they're free to chill, relax, do whatever. Well, a good-looking volunteer, in a casual attempt at conversation, naively asked us girls what it is we are up to at the Arava Institute. We immediately commenced, in a rapid narrative flow of information, interjecting and cutting one another off excitedly, to talk at him for nearly 20 minutes about the varied classes, activities, field work, and trips of the past week. The poor kid was completely overwhelmed. So...yes it has been akin to a full-scale innundation. The Arava Institute attracts the preeminent desert ecologists, horticulturists, archeologists, geologists, and physicists to teach our classes and they attempt to condense a semester's worth of material into a four-week summer program. The result is an incredibly stimulating, at times completely exhausting, intellectual romp up, down, and over mountains, dunes, trees, and geological epochs.

One of our most exhausting classes was the deceptively-named "experimental orchards", morning field work coupled with an afternoon lecture, by the distinguished dendrologist, Dr. Elaine Soloway. She took us to her plots across the road, for what should have been a leisurely stroll through the trees, but actually consisted of scrambling about in scorching heat to see upwards of several dozens types of trees, being driven halfway to insanity by the incessant buzzing of flies, and fruitlessly attempting to furiously scribble down the endless flow of information. Elaine took a break occasionally from her stream of tree facts to interject fierce and frequent diatribes against the state of the modern world. Especially on the imminent collapse of civilization on account of agribusinesses who she blamed for everything from rampant allergies and birth defects to a world-wide annihilation of genetic diversity. I had a feeling she and Michael Pollan would get along swimmingly.

Elaine's main crop is date palms. They became Ketura's main source of income after the Kibbutzniks decided that twenty years of pesticide-pouring, water-purifying, plastic-coating, equipment-purchasing in an attempt to grow lettuce in the 120 degree heat at 30 cents per 2.5 pounds might not be the most profitable business venture. They purchased salt and heat-loving dates trees instead whose fertilizer comes in the form of wild asses nibbling weeds at their base. In the name of 'biodiversity' (she really means world peace), Elaine also develops species that global desert-locals have depended on for milennia; Argania from Morocco, who the Berbers have used for thousands of years as a source of oil, grazing feed, and termite-proof wood for carved goods (though it was the World Bank Organization's brilliant "recommendation" that they cut down Argania and plant citrus trees in their place...a short-lived recommendation as the Argania were the only trees to survive the Atlas drought in the 90s); Meem, "the pharmacy of Indian villages" with 10-degree-cooler shaded enclaves, soap-producing leaves, and fruits that kill locusts by scrambling their appetite; and the Lay Lob, which in the time of Jacob was brought as a gift to the Pharoah for its properties (divine-smelling incense and herbal remedy for the West Nile virus) made it more valuable than silver and gold.

It can be somewhat of an upwards battle for Elaine to produce her crops...she had to fight the Ministry of Health for five years to convince them that her Sinai Caper, used by the Bedouin Israelis for thousands of years as jam, licqour and salt, was edible. They finally caved when she found a reference from an obscure half-mad British explorer 150 years ago who footnoted that the locals ate the plant. Her orchards encompass an abundance of other projects; preserving the last individual of a certain species in the region (in the case of the Myrrh species that Queen Sheba brought as a gift for King Solomon), domesticating water-thrifty perennial plants that thrive with under 50 mm of annual rainfall, and monitoring plants with medicinal value. She's even developing salvia--(supposedly) for it's anti-strep properties ;-).

That afternoon, as an unintended fourth of July shout-out, we talked to one of the Kibbutz founders and screened a movie she made about the early years in the 70s. The first people were American relics of the 60s, hippies with big dreams, bigger bell bottoms, and long hair, spilling over with ideas for a new beginning, roughing it out on a patch of land and living simply, needing nothing. There's a huge pomp and circumstance exchange with smartly dressed, stern-faced soldiers who hand over what was previously an army base to the dred-headed dreamers, as musicians who would go on to be the founders of Israeli rock jam in the background. It's quite the juxtaposition. The early years stuck close to the hippie, socialist ideals; the first community play was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and children were raised communally in day care centers as opposed to homes. The Kibbutz continued to evolve as it got older, but a lot of idealism held sway. Nowadays, pluralist religious practices still reign (the dining hall is Kosher, Shabbat Services are held in an egalitarian, bare-footed, bellowing, clapping jam-band fashion), money is still allocated in Big Brother chunks, and nothing is privatized.

I was less than thrilled for Thursday's schedule..(un) official rock-day. I had tried to do the readings the night before, and they were sprinkled with words straight out of A Clockwork Orange...a la "metamorphosed plutons" and "orogenic calc-alkaline. I just gave up. Day-time activities commenced with a "desert reflections" a silent walk through the mountains of the back yard in an attempt to stimulate creative response. Quiet time commenced, and I almost immediately tripped and squealed, inciting angry glares from my classmates, and for much of the walk was too busy furiously swatting away flies to pay attention to anything other than zzzzzz. After frustratingly climbing up 100 feet of rock face and killing the final fly, the noise finally desisted and I was able to look out over the landscape. I'll give it to this place, not that I could do it any justice, but it's god-damn beautiful. A smooth stretch of valley bordered on either side by upheavels, swells, and breaks of multi-colored, motley-textured bulging rock bits, sliding in and out of gravel and soft dunes, occasionally punctured by tufts of dry saxual bushes. In dozens of kilometers in most directions, the landscape is astonishingly empty and underdeveloped. Three self-contained kibbutzes, several modest orchards, a lone road and power wire, but mostly undulating desert. '"The human footprint seems so ephemeral", I thought to myself, "dwarfed by the larger long-term geological processes shaping the region." That was when I noticed a non-biodegradable plastic bottle of Eden water nicely nestled in my rocky outcrop, enjoying the view with me...

When we got to class for lectures, Tuba band camp had started in the next room. They spent the morning tuning...really, just lovely music. Luckily, rock-day went uphill from there. Our crash course was taught by the premier geologist of the region, Dr. Hanan Ginat who introduced himself as bilingual, a native Hebrew speaker also fluent in geology. It was, par for the course, a whirlwind of facts. Apparently, Israel, and the Arava Valley, is the site of all manner of interesting convergences; its the strip between the Red and Dead Sea; the triple point for Mediterranean, Sub-Saharan, Arabian, and Iranian ecologies; the meeting point of the Sinai, and Arabian tetonic plates; one of the most extreme deserts in the world (with 15 mm of rainfall per 3000 mm of potential evaporation); a confluence of landscapes that includes valleys, salt flats, high regions, mountains of Edoms, small dunes, flood plains, and alluvial fans; and the so-called "politically forgotten" spot of Israel where Jordan and Israel share the valley and all sort of quiet collaborations go unnoticed.

The Southern Arava and resulting mountains used to be a single mountain, 20 mya under the Tethys sea, that started tearing down the middle. Because of the dearth of plant life and extreme wind, the sedimentary layers of the rip are completely exposed. Hanan took us out to an overlook from Mount Ayit where we could see the geological processes in action...to the East Jordan's mountains of Edom, the oldest layer, the orange sedimentary base of the valley (softening to dunes), the mid-aged gray-speckled granite base, topped by pink and red sandstone strata, and crowned with tufts of yellow marine rocks. Over on the young mountains of Israel, we too stood on marine rocks, as I figured when I picked up a piece of limestone with an embedded sea shell.

After checking the night sky when we got back to the Kibbutz, bright search-like Venus to the East and red twinkling Mars to the West, we decided to get our heads of the clouds. A couple girls on the program and I bought a bottle of wine and we dressed up for toga night at the Kibbutz pub. White sheets, bare feet, flowers in our hair (in my case, in my increasingly dreaded hair). The Kibbutz is getting to me, I'm bound to wake up a full-blown hippie any day now...

Unicorns and Desert Dunes

After watching a hyena devour an entire lamb and getting an extremely quizzical look from the kid serving me meat when I asked if the cow was corn or grass-fed, I've decided to try on vegetarianism for size. So far so good. I've had Israeli salad (onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and olives) for six meals in a row. The most recent of which was epic--we ate Israeli salad and labanet (an Israeli cheesy yogurt) and pita bread and avocado and tehina (humus-like spread made from sesame seeds) under an acacia tree on a sand dune in the Samar as the sun sunk behind the Mountains of Moave. Delicious, all locally produced, fresh as can be, and with a garnish of Israeli Bedouin music.

The meal culminated our third class, Desert Biodiversity. The class was extremely rigorous...consisting of us running up and down sand dunes all afternoon and listening to a rambling, at times brilliant, lecture by Roee, one of the few desert ecologists in the region (apparently, the Israeli government isn't overly interested in salt brushes). The lecture was frequently interjected by diatribes against the ills of local agriculture which is apparently diverting water for irrigation and rapidly dehydrating and demolishing the majority of natural plant and animal life. He expounded his point as we sat on a field of emerald green lawn-grass smack in the middle of the barren dunes. The plot uses 1100 liters of local water daily in a region that saw 3 mm of rainfall this year, and is sold to local hotels who want to accommodate Western tourists.

The desert field work complemented our morning class, a lecture on the regional desert, Arava's, ecology, by Dr. Elli Groner, the academic director of the Arava institute. He does all sorts of work, including spearheading one of the first bilateral environmental projects with Jordan, LTER, that works to get Israel and Jordan to collaborate on desert ecology research, conservation, and education. He's chalk-full of answers to desert enigmas, like how such a barren environment can support the abundant plant life necessary for a healthy ecosystems. The secret? It doesn't. Instead, of plants, the desert depends primarily on bacteria to perform photosynthesis and detritus, dry leaves and remains, to supply calories. The dry leaves come from the approximately five fauna species that were brilliant enough to survive the nutrient-starved sand, killer plus-130 degree summer heat, and relentless battering wind. The plants have developed all sorts of weird adaptations like decoupling photosynthesis into night and day processes to avoid daytime blaze and growing to be abnormally tall and thin so they can absorb maximum crepuscular light and minimum midday heat. Instead of herbivores, the desert houses detritivores, relatives of the ubiquitous Palo Alto rolly polly, that scavenge the dry leaves and bacterial crust. Instead of carnivores, there are insectivores, which in the Southern Arava includes all sort of funky creatures like skinks, metallic lizards that slither and whose legs are about as useful as our appendices, sun spiders which are neither yellow nor spiders but are large enough to feed on birds and mammals, and snakes who hop sideways instead of slithering.

Yes, the desert has several herbivores and carnivores, but they are far from traditional. We got to see several up close yesterday, when we visited the Hai Bar Nature Reserve that tends injured and endangered species for rehabilitation and reintroduction into the region. All sorts of obscure animals were running around, like addaxes, ibexes, and onegers. Not to mention ostriches, which are apparently simply too irremediably dumb to ever be reintroduced to the region. The reserve attempted to release a population several years ago, and the ostriches did brilliant things like lay their eggs in the middle of the road and wander up to Bedouin encampments to chat (ostriches, as a Bedouin informed me, taste 'tayyib' just like chicken). Ah, and we got to see a unicorn! Seriously, we saw the Crusaders' white single-horned horse-like mythical creatures from far-away lands. Though, it would appear the Anglo-Saxons didn't have any good biologists in their day, for the oryxes certainly do not fly and most have two horns. (Or perhaps their sight was addled by their genius decision to march through the scorching desert in full-length chain mail).

Just because my classes have thus far consisted of watching leopards elegantly slink by isn't the only reason why this place is awesome. For one, no one bats an eye when I wander into class barefoot. In fact, my Mowhawk-totting Sasha Cohen look-alike professor Uri, who has a doctorate in anarchy from Oxford, actually gave me a rainbow drug-rug to keep me warm in the blasting air conditioning instead. Then, there's the fact that it's remarkably unusual to run into a group of Arab and Israeli kids in the evening that aren't sitting around a circle with a guitar inviting you to partake. Also, the whole lifestyle lives and breathes sustainability. We compost and recycle pretty much everything (I couldn't even tell you where the nearest trash can is) and use non-potable water for pretty much everything else (like showering with a bucket and using the run-off to hydrate the watermelon). Even the furniture is sustainable--the walls in the institute and the chairs and benches around the caravans where we live are made from hay overlain with mud. Not to mention, there's something slightly chill about being able to blog wirelessly in a wadi, a dried out stream, under the waning moon and desert stars.