rucksack revolution

For months, I’ve been trying to get through On The Road, but Kerouac’s manic  wanderlust doesn’t quite match up with mine, so I put it down for weeks at a time. While apartment- and pet-sitting for the two weeks immediately after moving off the farm, I picked it up again, and tried to get back into the beat. Then the dog ate my book – but he only ripped out the pages I’d already read, so I took it as an encouraging sign to finish the rest. Eventually, I had to pack up Kerouac in my trusty maroon backpack (aka Wendell Berry) and I headed to Palestine (the West Bank), where another dog named Chlamydia took off with my ragged book, and I haven’t seen it since.

I was staying at a permaculture farm project in the village outside of Bethlehem, where the compost toilet room’s walls are plastered with quotes by Mark Twain, William Burroughs, (the real) Wendell Berry, and, of course, Mr. Kerouac. My favorite lines in the stone outhouse, from the Dharma Bums:

“I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution, thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em … go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures. . . .”

And I realized I needed to stop looking into Kerouac’s boozy list of half-legal escapades and start looking around, cuz hell, here I am on the road. Am I climbing mountains, writing poems and making old girls happy? Yes, yes, and … yes (given a loose interpretation). At this point, it’s been 25 days without a place to call home, and I’ve been wandering around more or less happily all over the Middle East, relying on good friends and good fortune my next adventure. I spent almost two weeks in Tel Aviv, doing laundry and hanging out with new and old friends (Michal and Shoshi both moved to Tel Aviv for a few months). When city life started to go bland, Wendell and I took a bus to Palestine, where I met up with some people I’d met before at Abed’s, and I stayed for nearly a week at the farm in Beit Sahour. Palestine is a really wonderful place – intriguing, calm, honest; I felt entirely safe, more than welcome, and I gained an entirely new perspective and accompanying vocabulary in just a few days. I helped build a water cistern with cement and bricks (how satisfying!); visited the Church of the Nativity (of”away in a manger’ fame – I touched the rock upon which he was born!); I even got taken out on an extremely awkward Valentine’s Day date (the kind of which is only good for the stories you can tell afterward) …

Along with the Alternative Information Center and a group of internationals, I took a trip to Chevron (Hebron), a city where the conflict between Arab residents and Jewish settlers has brought out the most vile human behavior imaginable. Chevron was the one city I was scared to visit – given its volatile citizenry, riots and shootings are not infrequent – but found there a really pleasant old city and festively active downtown. Without going into so many details, it’s examples like Chevron that shock me into wondering why every person is not committed to fairness, justice and civility: there can be no square inch of land worth stoning a child on his or her way to school, or throwing feces onto shopkeepers, or refusing people a basic right such as water, or, or, or?  or … can there?

A 40-minute bus ride and an apathetic wave of a checkpoint guard’s hand (with my Caucasian skin and American passport, there was no need to fingerprint me, search my bag, or question my motives for travel), and I was back in Israel, a little less certain and a bit more humble.

Shoshi, her friend Megan from home, and I then took off on a 7-day desert/sea tiyul; we tremped and camped our way up and down the Negev and Arava deserts, from Ein Gedi to Eilat. Tremping (hitch-hiking) is very common and safe here, just point your finger at the road. We started our trip at a hippie colony on the shores of the Dead Sea, called Mitzuqe Dragot, where we partook in the sublimely bizarre ritual of floating in the Dead Sea (!!! woah !!!) Next, we tremped south to the vacation destination of Ein Gedi, but flash flood warnings kept us from actually hiking in the valleys, riverbeds, and waterfalls for which the spot is known. Instead, we stood on high ground and watched the floods rush from mountains to sea (dozens of Israelis showed up to watch, I guess flash floods are a sort of spectator-sport here). To escape the rain and floods, we headed down to the sunny southern tip of Israel, Eilat, which is on the northern shore of the Red Sea. Eilat is the Las Vegas of the Middle East (not really where we wanted to be), so we dunked in the Red Sea, ate falafel from a guy we think might have played the captain on some version of Flipper, and slept a lot. The next morning we bussed up to Masada, a mountain-top city-fortress built by King Herod BCE and later occupied by a rebel group, the last Jews in the land of Israel before being expelled by the Romans 2000 years ago. All along the way we met and befriended travelers and locals, cooked our meals over open fires, bathed in freshwater sulfur springs, hiked and hitched, and generally enjoyed being young and lucky.

A sweet elderly woman at Masada told us she’d never forget our smiling faces and free spirits – a bit of a dramatic statement, but I’d like to think Jack Kerouac would be proud.

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~ by travelinshoes on February 25, 2009.