Israel: It’s for the birds (and for you)

When I met my first husband, I told him about our family's annual camping trips to provincial parks where we'd drive in, park on the site, pitch the tent, and head to the beach or river or forest or whatever to enjoy nature.  Sometimes, those campsites would have running water, other times, you had to walk somewhere else to get water.  My father's strategy was sending the kids to wash dishes in the bathroom -- strictly forbidden according to all provincial campground rules, but you know.  Someone has to be an exception to the rules.

So that was camping.

But my first husband quickly declared, "It doesn't count if you can get to it with a car."

He would have had a hard time with Israel.

Here, camping sometimes means that your tent is just a few feet away from the next person's…

(© Tiberias municipality via Wikimedia)

… and hiking usually means taking one of quite a few well-used routes, like the Israel Trail, a 1025 km. (look it up!) route – nothing to sneeze at, really, given that National Geographic has called one of the world's 20 most "epic trails."  But there certainly isn’t the variety, and from what I’ve heard, you’re very likely, in most stretches and hiking-friendly seasons, to bump into a number of fellow travellers.

(It’s also perhaps the only one that apparently features a lending library so you can pick up reading material along the way -- People of the Book, indeed.)

(photo credit © royisoko via Wikimedia)

Finding a nature getaway definitely isn't hard in Israel.  But as with so many things when you make aliyah, you may have to (slightly) redefine what you mean by the term. 

Since almost every spot is within half an hour's drive of a big city, and there are factories and processing plants of all kinds everywhere from north to south, you're probably not going to get total solitude and silence to commune with nature unless you take to the deep south.

But that has its upside, too, like the fact that you can hop in a bus in Nahariya and within not very long, be standing in the middle of one of the world's most extraordinary bird sanctuaries -- the Hula Valley.  A crucial migration spot between Europe and Africa (and back), the Hula Valley hosts about 500 million migrating birds every single year, and an incredible range of birds as well.

And it happens to be crane season RIGHT NOW.  Well, okay, as our guide explained, these days, it's crane season all winter long, at least until March.

That's because of the Strange History of the Hula Valley, which I'll sum up here very briefly.
Maybe in Hebrew school you learned how

The occupation of the eucalyptus

What’s with all these trees?

One of the first things you’ll see when you come to Israel is that there are trees everywhere. Gradually, it may dawn on you that many seem to be the same kind of tree – the shaggy dog of Israeli horticulture, the eucalyptus tree. And like the iconic sabra cactus, these trees, too, are originally strangers here: imported foreigners, imposters making themselves at home on the desert landscape.

Their Hebrew name is אקליפטוס/ekalyptus. I think in Latin they’re eucalyptus camaldulensis, or Red River Gum, but I could be wrong, because there are something like 800 kinds of eucalyptus out there. These are not the round-leaved, fragrant trees of Australian legend, although they were originally an Australian import, planted by JNF a century ago for a country which desperately needed trees.

Our eucalyptus have long, pointy leaves. The trees hang out everywhere in scraggly bunches, gangly and overgrown: outside of train stations, in parks, gardens, neglected lots. Their bark is scruffy, sloughy, slipping off here and there in patches that make the trees look nothing if not mangy. And they’ll thrive just about anywhere, which is why they are here in the first place.

Over the last century or so since it first arrived, the eucalyptus has become an iconic foreigner here - so much so that one of the best-known Israeli folksongs, written by the First Lady of Israeli song Naomi Shemer, is called "The Eucalyptus Grove" (clip here).

For Israelis, the eucalyptus has come to represent permanence and homecoming after millennia of exile. As the folksong’s chorus goes,

Yet the Banks beside the Jordan,
it’s like nothing has changed,
You’ll find the same old silence:
the scenery’s still the same:
The grove of Eucalyptus,
the bridge and the old barge,
And scent of salty air upon the water. (lyrics link)

For those who are inclined to political correctness, there is probably much to be read into this thriving occupation of an invasive non-native species, as represented by the eucalyptus.

Everything you wanted to know #1: Snakes

… ie, Every Dumb Thing You Might NOT Have Wanted to Know About Aliyah, but I Did and This is My Blog So Here it Comes Anyway.

Here’s my question:

Olim in the north - just curious, have you ever seen a snake? Did you freak out??? Panicking a little here...

(p.s. This picture, taken from Wikimedia, is the most benign-looking shot I could find of the Israeli viper, aka צפע ארצישראלי, aka Vipera palaestinae… benign mostly because it’s just lying around, with no sense of scale, as opposed to being gigantic or deadly or whatnot.)

And in case you’re wondering why I’m worried – here in Ontario, we have exactly ONE species of venomous snake.  The red areas are where it lives.  The green area is where I live.  Far, far away.

So that’s why. 

Here’s the answer(s):

Responses from the five Israelis I know on Facebook:

• Never ever ever ever saw a snake. Saw a turtle, scorpion (the black one) and spiders....
• I did :) And I have killed numerous scorpions :)
• Two neigbbours have been bitten by snakes. Both lived to tell the tale. I've only ever seen baby snakes.
• My friend's dog was bitten by a snake and died from the bite. I have only seen one once. But we know they are out there....
• I have seen snakes and scorpions and rodents and tortoises and mammals of all shapes and sizes. When you are out in nature you need to learn basic rules such as the correct way to turn over a rock( finding scorpions) and where and when you might come across a snake( they don't like the cold and they hibernate). The only poisonous snake we ever came across was right outside our vacation condo in Virginia. BTW, cats are the only known predator for snakes and scorpions in Israel and there are many that would love to have someone adopt them. [Note to self:  YES!  CATS, HERE WE COME!!!]
• never saw one... in the whole week I've been here:)
• They are here your not looking.lol  [That one’s from my aging father-in-law in Ottawa, who is just discovering facebook]
• Never seen one, thank G-d, but they do exist even in Beit Shemesh. A neighbor was bitten once outside our shul. She was treated and survived to get married and have a kid (so far).

There…Aren’t you glad I asked???