6. FEAR OF THE FALL
a hike to the Barak gorge in Israel’s Negev Desert
note: the photographs in this chapter are from different hikes in the deserts of Israel
After quite a few challenging hikes in the desert, I feel I am finally beginning to overcome my fear of heights. And yet, in moments of weakness, it always seems to be lying in wait like a wild animal, ready to pounce on me. That is what happened on our hike to the Barak gorge.
We start out several kilometers after the road from Mitzpe Ramon to Eilat winds its way out of the Ramon Crater. At an overlook, where we can see the three different levels of the landscape, we sit down for breakfast. One step below us is the Barak Plain, with the canyon of Nahal Barak cutting deeply through it. In the far distance, on the lowest level, lies the Arava valley that runs along the border with Jordan.
Our physical appetite satisfied, we walk a few kilometers on fairly flat and uneventful ground, when our path comes to an abrupt end. An unreal landscape stretches out below the steep cliff where we are standing. In the middle of a vast plain of white and brownish sand rise a succession of peaks, like islands in an enormous bay, with at the far right, an isolated mountain emerging above this imaginary body of water – a beacon marking the entrance to the harbor.
We linger for a long while at the edge of these Ashosh Cliffs, not willing to let go of the glorious view. Eventually, we begin our descent from the upper plateau along a streambed with white and smooth stone steps. Just as we are commenting on how enchanting this hike is turning out to be, we are told to stop – our guide Ro’I, who is new to our group, has made a wrong turn. Though this streambed would eventually lead us to Nahal Barak, right ahead of us there is a dry waterfall of some eight to ten meters, which we have no way of circumventing.
Quickly Ro’I starts to climb a high hill on our left to scout the terrain and then yells out from above that we should join him. There does not seem to be a path up and so it is a free-for-all to scale the gentle slopes of whitish earth, topped by what appears to be a steep, darker layer. It is not clear from below whether that upper layer consists of soft crumbly earth or of more solid rocks. As the first hikers seem to have made it over the ridge without any visible difficulties, I follow, cautiously, yet with a reasonable measure of self-confidence.
However, when I reach the almost vertical rocky layer, I realize that my suspicions have been well-founded. Even though these are indeed hard rocks, they seem to be loosely embedded in the soft white earth. Carefully, I try to check each one out before holding on to it, and little by little, I manage to pull myself up. Then, suddenly, a rock I had judged to be firm and secure comes loose, sending electrifying currents up my spine. Instinctively I grasp for a firmer hold, and stand there gasping, balancing myself on a precarious foothold with a sheer drop below. Slowly, I start to regain my breath and somehow or other continue my crawl up towards the top. I have no recollection of how I did it, but from now on I am not the same anymore. I have been shaken to the core.
And then I see, to my alarm, that the worst is yet to come. To reach the streambed with the correct trail, we must cross a long stretch on the other side of the same friable hill, but now the menacing conditions are exacerbated by an even steeper drop. Somehow going up a mountain is always easier because you do not have to look down and your upward momentum works entirely in your favor, as if making you lighter, defying gravity. On the descent, however, your movement augments the downward force. It is here that my fear of heights strikes.
There are no paths on this hill, not even paths made by the desert ibex. There is no tangible proof it is capable of supporting human feet. How can I know it is at all possible to get across when even the largest rocks might turn out to be entirely loose and my foothold will vanish in seconds? It does not help to think that some of the other hikers appear to have made it across – for perhaps they have been inordinately lucky. If one soldier successfully crosses a minefield, that does not mean there are no more mines.
It is the fear of the unknown that intensifies the fear of heights. If I know for sure that I only must get beyond this one trouble spot and the ordeal will be over, then I will just hold my breath and go. Perhaps that is how I worked up the courage to reach the top of the ridge just a few moments earlier.
But now there is no way of deluding myself that if only I make it to the next bend, to the next rock, everything will be all right. I can see the entire slope ahead of me and it looks endless, without any safe points to aim for. And what if we will come across a place that is impassible? We will then have to turn back and go through this very same nightmare all over again.
In this moment of terror, the only way I can get across this terrifying terrain is with the help of a friend. It is Avi who notices the dread on my face and comes to my rescue, and I, blindly and thankfully, deliver my fate into his hands. With his usual confidence-instilling charm, Avi leads me across the most harrowing parts on this hillside, with its soft loose earth and falling rocks, until we finally reach a place where I can rely again on my own resources and link up with the trail in the streambed that we should have taken in the first place. Ah, what an easy descent that would have been.
How ridiculous it is, to think that the hand of another hiker, standing on the very same unsteady ground, could stop me from falling. I know very well that if I were to really lose my balance, I would drag Avi along with me. And yet, it was so easy to fall back to being the helpless little girl who wants to be taken care of, delegating the responsibility for my wellbeing not just to any other person who exudes a sense of self-confidence, but particularly – given my patriarchal upbringing – to a man.
The precipice accentuates the stress and strain of growing up, the tension of taking responsibility for myself, for my own life – the constant battle not to fall ill, not to fall into depression, not to fall apart. I have no fear of flying. In an airplane, where I am not in command, there is nothing I can do to prevent a crash and so worrying cannot possibly affect my fate. Walking along a precipice, it is precisely because I am the one in charge, that I am overcome with fear. Then, I am overwhelmed by the urge to put an end to that excruciating state of fear, that moment of terror – to end the tremendous responsibility for my own life. To fall would stop the anxiety, it would end that ordeal, delivering me from this terrifying nightmare.
One element in the fear of heights might, paradoxically, be temptation – it is the snake from The Little Prince that tries to lure me to the depths, to the sweet bliss of oblivion. A Jungian analyst friend suggests that fear of heights stems from a yearning for the womb, to be enveloped by the Earth Mother. Climbing leads to a loss of a sure footing, to the sense of being on unstable ground, reaching higher into uncertainty, without the reassurance of the mother. The temptation to fall is based on that desire for security and warmth.
Perhaps it is not death that I fear, but my giving in to the urge to fall. Standing at the edge of the precipice, I realize that only a single step separates me from certain death, a step that is in my power to take. If death has to come sometime or other in my life, I might be tempted to choose my own finale to the story of my life – rather than being caught by death unprepared, without poetry and design.
On the other hand, I recognize that we do not always have a choice. I know too well that accidents in the desert do happen – and that only intensifies my fear. Looking down a precipice, I am not like the other hikers – I know something they do not, after my dear friends’ teenage son fell to his death from a dry waterfall in the Negev. I have a certain intimacy with the fall – it is very much my story.
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The white rock bottom of the gully, where we are now safely going down, has been exposed and polished by the waters of periodic flashfloods. Here I pick up the string of wondrous beads that was cut in the original streambed, as if the traumatic interlude has never taken place.
Eventually, this little dry stream will continue its flow into the immense “bay” we have seen from above the Ashosh Cliffs, but we do not to follow this rivulet all the way to its confluence with Nahal Ashosh that meanders below those cliffs. Instead, we cut across, over its watershed, towards another Ashosh tributary, Nahal Re’im, where we turn around and start to travel upstream.
There is something uncanny about going against the current, even when the river is dry. My body’s instincts want to follow the natural course of the flow, to go with the river and spill into the huge Ashosh bay. It takes me some time to adjust myself to this awkward sensation and feel at ease walking in the “wrong” direction.
After skirting a secluded waterfall with a dry pool at its base, we climb out of the bed of Nahal Re’im towards a view of the Barak Plain, which we have seen from higher up, at breakfast. Now we reach the part of the hike with marked trails, traversed by dirt roads with jeep tracks. One of these roads takes us down to the plain and from there we continue southwards, past deeply cut gorges like jagged fingers of the drowning trying to grasp onto firmer ground.
A little further on we turn into a streambed, which we follow for a while, when, suddenly, around a bend, the rocky bed stops, as though we had sailed to the farthest end of the earth and are about to plunge over its edge. Filled with trepidation I tiptoe to that edge and lying on my belly I peer down one of the deepest waterfalls I have ever seen. My head is spinning, though there is no way I can possibly fall from this secure position. Yes, there is something physiological about vertigo – perhaps it is not all in my mind. And I lie there, in utter immobility and awe, feeling the blood in my veins gushing down the vertical drop.
Cautiously, I rise, after a long while, and follow the path over a hill on the right to bypass the falls. My friend Ellen says: “Look behind you at these people who are walking in the streambed, they have not yet reached the waterfall, they do not know what awaits them…”. It is the “moment before”, when they can still joke around, when they can still be their naïve, unwary selves.
And now it is my turn to lose that carefree attitude once more. In front of me is the descent into the Barak gorge – a path snaking its way down to the very bottom of the waterfall from which we had just peered down. I must gather myself together, shift into the gear of self-reliance. I must convince myself that I can trust my own body, that I am agile and well-coordinated. That, through the years, I have become an experienced hiker, that I have good boots with gripping soles and there is no reason in the world why I should fall. I tell myself that this path is sufficiently wide and well-trodden, unlike the crumbling hill we had surmounted earlier, that there will be no tricky spots ahead, because it is a marked and thus officially endorsed trail. It has stood the test of many hikers before me. So why should I, of all people, be the one to fall?
Still, it is good to have Ellen nearby. Precisely because she does not take charge of me that I am able to reassemble the shards of my self-confidence. Earlier, in my outburst of panic, I had blindly entrusted my safety to Avi, relinquishing all responsibility for myself. Going down with Ellen - a woman - I start to rely on my own inner resources.
Halfway down it happens. I stop clutching on to the security of my fears and finally let myself go with the downward movement of the path. It is like when you are first taught the separate steps of a dance and you do them hesitantly, trying hard to remember what comes next. And then, as if a switch is suddenly turned on, the isolated steps start to flow into each other to form a continuous whole, and you begin to dance.
It is the image used by Heinrich Von Kleist to describe the unselfconscious grace of the marionettes’ dance – a return to the state of innocence that existed before eating from the Tree of Knowledge (1). It is that moment of surrender (2), when you are wholly present in a sublime garden, without caring if you are naked or not.
Some years ago, perhaps even some months ago, this very same descent would have paralyzed me through and through, and now I am doing it on my own. Ellen says: “just keep your eyes straight ahead and don’t look down!” And what if I do? Like Lot’s wife, would I turn into a pillar of salt? Is looking at such magnificent sights not the prime reason for being out here in the desert?
And so, I steal one glance at the sheer drop below me. My head is already spinning, but in that split second, I make out the vertical walls of solid rock with the immense dry waterfall and the path winding its way down into the gorge. I can almost hear the imaginary waters roaring down the stony falls. And at the distant bottom of the dark ravine, a speck of the pristine, narrow canyon carved into the white rock, bares its secret, like a glistening pearl.
Of all the views on this hike, it is that that fleeting image of the luscious white canyon, that glimpse of a paradise lost, that impressed itself most firmly on my psyche. Perhaps it is precisely because I was not on known, secure ground, but was hovering above the abyss, risking the possibility of the fall.
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