Birthday hike

There's this old Family Circus cartoon, (I'm not sending this one, don't worry.) where Dolly is looking at a calendar, and says, "hey, know what? All our birthdays fall in the same year!"

I don't really appreciate the celebration of birthdays. We're celebrating something that everybody gets, while signifying something we generally wish hadn't happened quite as many times as it did.

This year, I got a Scrabble CD, a kippa, a key chain, and a photographical history book. None of the gifts were anything to complain about, all were actually quite nice, but I didn't get a lot. All of that was from my family. Again, I'm not complaining. I can't, I intentionally only let the date slip three days before, so they were not able to do one of their parties on me.

Instead, for my birthday, I went on a hike. Generally, the hikes I've been on are relatively boring, because the area has been gone over so many times, there are so many people there, that the hike loses any sense of accomplishment.

Not this one. There was only five of us, so there was nobody to complain that they wanted to go back. There were none of these tourist booths that you see everywhere in this country. There wasn't going to be a van at the end to take us back.

It was a Friday, which meant that nothing was planned, so we left at five AM. We took five tramps to get us to where we were going, and had to go through two Arab villages to do so. Then we started the hike in the Golan, at around eight thirty.

To assure the solitude of the trip, we tried to break past a military base. We were caught, but since one of us was in the army, we were allowed to proceed. We proceeded on to the hike you long for. It was beautiful and green. It was rocky, it was fresh, it was the type of hike that you needed all four limbs to get you across. It wasn't grueling in such a way that you needed the brute strength, but difficult, fun, and mentally stimulating as the obstacle courses from when you were offered as a kid, but with stronger surroundings, fresh air, and the incredible scenery of the Golan.

We hiked, we saw the sights of the Golan. The only things we saw of people having been there before were left over army munitions. There were signs of the soldiers having been there. There was a ten foot symbol of the Golani soldiers made out of stones. You could see a big mound of dirt and a large hole that was obviously created due to some form of punishment.

There were the rusted metal boxes of the army food left from the departed troops. Other treasures, the two non-Israelis on the hike, were kept as souvenirs. Guy kept used armor shells, he found a tear gas casing, two grenades cases, (one still unused.) and a bazooka casing. I found two helmets. Two authentic, used, army helmets, riddled with bullets, one Syrian, one Israeli.

They weren't worn when they were shot. They were used as field practice, you can see by the entry and exist holes. But, to me, it's an amazing set of history, and I like the symbolism. I consider it one of the best birthday presents I've gotten.

Get me outa here!!!

Wanna read the last one?

Wanna read the next one?

Take me back to the list

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Michael Kadish

"Thy years wants wit, thy wits want edge." -- Shakespeare , Titus Andronicus II scene i.

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