Limestone, Goat Milk, and Desert Sunsets

Here's a quick story for you. Nothing serious tonight - there hasn't been a lot of good news to share lately and with the political world here in a sort of stalemate and cooperation largely suspended, it seems best not to drag out the discussion for the present.

So on to happier topics. On Saturday, I went on one my weekly rock-climbing expeditions to Ein Fara, a beautiful natural park inside of Wadi Qelt. The Wadi is a gorgeous valley carved through limestone cliffs, starting just inside the West Bank, straddled by a Palestinian town and a Jewish settlement, and cutting its way through the Judean Desert hills toward Nablus and Jordan in the distance. With the sun setting over the white cliffs and an evening haze hanging over the hills in the distance, the place is nothing short of magical. Peaceful and tactile, with goat flocks wandering the hillsides and monks emerging from their monastic dwellings carved into the rock, it can transport even the burliest secular climber into the pages of the Bible.

It was a beautiful way to spend a peaceful Shabbat. I was just clipping into the anchors on my last climb when I looked down and saw a shepard (Abbud I think his name was) talking to my climbing partner. He had been steering a massive heard of goats through the valley and had wondered over to ask Zac what we were up to. Zac lowered me to the ground, and we spent the night hour chatting with him in a combination of Abbud's shaky Hebrew and Zac's broken Arabic. He told us how his father and his father's father had lived in this valley. He was 28 years old and lived with his wife (his first) in the Palestinian village at the top of the Wadi, where his 14 brothers and sisters and father, mother and father's other wife and his extended family also lived. He had a cave too in the wadi where he often slept when he was out with his herd. He asked us if we were thirsty and pulling over one of the passing goats showed me how to milk it. We filled up one of my water bottles with the most delicious milk I have ever tasted, warm and sweet and frothy. We talked for a while, about our families and the comparative difficulties of having 2 brothers or 10, and how some people had become afraid to come to the Wadi, particularly down further into the West Bank and since the conflict of late had started. Abbud told us that some people are good and some are bad - it doesn't matter whether their Arab or Jewish, it's just how it is. Zac carved a kolrabi with his camping knife and we washed it down with goat's milk, talked until the sky started to grow dim, shook hands with our friend, and wandered out as the sun was setting.


So then, here is some evidence for you of peace and goat's milk in the Holy Land.