By Benjamin Oestericher, NFTY in Israel Participant, Bus 7
I’m a city kid, and, if you were to ask me a week ago, the last place I’d want to spend my summer was the desert; sleeping on dirt and rocks, hiking up mountains, and living in the grueling heat, miles away from civilization. And yet, it was there that I found myself, spending four days with my camp friends on our trip to Israel. When we arrived, I reluctantly journeyed up the mountain where we began our hike that afternoon, and my attitude began to shift. Sure, we were away from the world. And sure, hiking was not my forte. Yet, camp, and the community it was made up of, was. And so as we stumbled up that mountain on that first hike, something became clear. I was not hiking. We were.
We supported one another, laughed off falls, asked each other if we were okay, told stories, and had conversations. We passed the time together, and what might be scary or boring for an individual like myself became encouraging and exciting for our group.
That first night I was staring up at the stars. We were waking up at 4:30 the next morning, but none of us were actually asleep in our sleeping bag. The beauty of the nature surrounding us was majestic. We watched and talked as the moon rose into the sky. We fidgeted in our sleeping bags as we felt the hard rocks underneath us. But to distract ourselves, all we had to do was look up at the sky.
As a native New Yorker, stars always feel special to me. All the light pollution that surrounds the city obscures the beauty of the night sky. Yet, lying on my back in a desert, no city light visible in any direction, the sky was perfect. Constellations illuminated the sky as the North Star kept our focus. By the later nights in the desert, it was entirely dark. Everyone had turned off their flashlights, and everyone’s phone had died many nights before. And yet, it was also perfectly bright in the night sky, as shooting stars reminded us that there is something ineffable about nature. Something impossible to describe until you see and feel it for yourself. Until you see that amazing mountain peak, overlooking a vast desert expanse. See that night sky, without the lights of a city to obscure it. Feel the perfectly soft sand of the sand dunes at your feet, seeping in through your shoes as you roll down it. And while the nature and the feelings it evokes may be hard to describe, it certainly makes you think. As we finished our final hike, we all sat separately on the highest peak in Elot. The view was spectacular. On every side of us was another country. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Lebanon. And yet, in nature, the complicated politics of the Middle East melt away. Because it is all desert. No matter what country it comes from, the sand and mountains are indistinguishable. It is all magnificent.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
Lao Tzu
