My friend asked me if I wanted to take the scenic route from the Golan Heights back to Haifa and I of course agreed.
She was full of superlatives about the view and its being 30 meters away from the Jordanian border at one part and how it’d be totally worth it.
Hard to say no to that. I love a great view.
She did mention the mountain was a bit of a rickety drive, as mountains sometimes are.
No big deal, I thought to myself. I’ve been on mountains before.
And after all, this was an official road of Israel and I’m sure they wouldn’t authorize a public road that wasn’t safe. Right? Right??
No problem.
And so I found myself on a very narrow, twisty mountain road, with a charmingly short metal guard between us and open air and a long drop.
We passed a few warning signs along the way that set a pleasant tone for the drive.
The first was a reminder to drive in low gear. I questioned why, having zero experience in driving stick shift and very little with automatic either.
My friend (who was driving) explained that the steepness and curviness of the mountain road was such that brakes wouldn’t work if we needed to slow down; they would just stop working altogether, so we needed to lower the gear and rely on the car to slow us down instead of the brakes.
Essentially, the combined force of the car’s weight on this incline as it wound its merry way throughout the mountain’s snakelike curves would burn out the brakes, thereby failing to slow us down when needed, sliding us right off the mountainside and into the depths of Jordan Valley.
This was highly relevant information I’d have liked to know before eagerly agreeing to the scenic route.
But okay.
“So…the sign said low gear,” I said, trying to find a semblance of safety and control in all this. “You just went from 3 to 2. Why not down to 1?” I asked. “Just in case?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s way too slow.”
The next sign on the path said, “DANGEROUS CURVES”. Delightful. This sign should exist in certain people’s bedrooms. I was all right.
Dangerous curves: ha.
Low gear (but not too low?). Okay, nothing we couldn’t handle.
The next sign along the way told us, “FALLING ROCKS”.
“Oh,” I said. “Great.”
The FALLING ROCKS sign helpfully displayed a picture of rocks plummeting upon an unsuspecting car.
Or perhaps a car that highly suspected it, because it too saw the FALLING ROCKS sign before its moment of destruction. I wondered about the graphic designer who created this supportive road sign and reluctantly congratulated him/her on the sign’s abundance of clarity.
I glanced at the mountains around me, trying to pinpoint the loose rocks that would ultimately hurtle toward us and bring about our end, whether crushed on the road or in the air and eventually on the ground in a million burnt pieces after being pushed off the mountainside by the previously suspected falling rocks (and subsequent inferno as our car hit bottom).
I identified a number of questionable geological structures, but they were, for now, static, and we passed by each one as ably as second gear allowed us.
Another couple DANGEROUS CURVES signs reminded me gently that traveling this route was not something you do if you cling steadfastly to the miracle of life.
I nodded at the next sign: “SLOW” – bidding us to slow the heck down and keep it that way.
For anxious emphasis, whenever we passed this type of sign, I repeated it out loud once, as if it were a mantra of safety, as if to remind my friend, the very competent driver, that the State of Israel wanted us to drive at a nice, slow pace so we wouldn’t kill ourselves on this death mountain.
I appreciated their concern.
It was around this time that I confessed to her that I’d long held a phobia of falling. Not of heights, but the threat of falling, whether from high up or not.
It’s part of why I love Israel in the winter, because there’s no ice on the ground, so I won’t slip and fall. I am a basket-case in Midwestern American winters.
No, instead of icy winters, we in Israel have mountains. I adore mountains.
Except when they are death mountains.
I admitted that I was more scared of falling off a mountain than being shot or otherwise harmed by violence. The concept of plummeting to my death from a cliff terrifies me.
And this is ironically countered by the fact that I love the Israeli mountains more than anywhere else on earth.
I added that it was good that we took this route; that I needed to push myself out of my comfort zone and manage my fears.
And I certainly discovered on this drive a number of opportunities for practicing the management of those fears.
She mentioned that a road was coming up where we could get off and look at Jordan Valley properly. Except she misjudged that turn and we instead found ourselves driving up this barely-a-road dirt road that had about five inches more space on either side than the already-small car required.
And it was not advisable to go beyond those five inches on either side, because beyond those five inches on either side were short but significant barbed wire fences with lots of upside-down red triangle signs, and in case you were not aware what the red upside-down triangle signs meant, there were also a few signs with Hebrew, Arabic, and English:
DANGER
MINES!
These signs indicated old land mines laying dormant in the soil, which were to the right of us, and also to the left of us, and also right in front of us, like God Himself at all ends, right at the end of this dubious road that I did not think had enough room to even turn around, let alone get out and walk around the many red upside-down triangle signs warning of spontaneous death or dismemberment by an explosion that had been patiently waiting to activate for the last four or five decades.
She speculated whether we should go to the end and get out there to look around, whereas I politely recommended the opposite: getting the hell out of this open-field active land mine museum with possible death on three out of four sides.
My friend, she is fearless, but she agreed that this was the wrong road and she meant to go down another. And because there was indeed nowhere to turn around without forging a path into death’s arms, we slowly backed out like we came in, without turning around.
I sent nervous looks right and left, with the barbed wire and the red upside-down triangles and the five inches on either side.
My heart didn’t resume a normal pace until we successfully reached the cement road and launched ourselves back down the more reliable path of dangerous curves and falling rocks.
Finally, I could breathe again.
I believe this is when I saw the sign, complete with English typo: “BEWAR OF LAND SLIDE”. And I started to laugh.
“This is an excellent experience,” I told her. “One I don’t feel obligated to repeat often.”
We found our way to the correct side road, which was more kosher than the road we’d turned down before. I saw no signs of land mines buried in the dirt around this new side road, so it felt as supremely safe as the vault of Fort Knox.
We took this road down to a clearing and parked the car. We got out of the car and did the only thing possible at that moment: stare.
We stared at Jordan Valley and the mountains that surrounded it.
We saw the space around us enveloped by the immense height, by the ranges of land that seemed folded by giants, by the greenery of trees and shrubs, by the Jordanian lakes and towns and roads and cars.
We pointed to the other side and felt there must be someone pointing back at us, wondering about Israelis as we wondered about Jordanians, as we all shared this incredible view from our respective plateaus.
We walked around the abandoned bunker and found, as was inevitable, more barbed wire with more red upside-down triangles, guarding the border of Israel with the silence of decades-buried land mines left after the treaty was signed.
We climbed up higher and walked to the other side of the bunker.
And we stared.
Days later, in my head, I am still staring. I remember being afraid of that mountain road—sorely afraid—but as I write this, my fears are nowhere to be found.
The view is what stays inside me, and the view is what speeds up my heart.
And I am aching for another look.
