The Trouble with Tramping

Buses? There aren't any buses in the West Bank. There is only God and your finger.

-Rachel Yeul, crazy settler and hitchhiker extraordinaire

Tramp (v) - Hebrew slang for 'to hitchike.'

Ex: I tramped from Hebron to Jerusalem with some sketchy settlers.

The highway is empty, and if no one stops, I am going to die. I realize this as I throw my pack down at the trampeada, my head spinning from heat and lack of water. It's a shock when I realize that's not an exaggeration. Going to die. We say this all the time—if I fail this test, if I don't get some food, if I have to keep running, I'm going to—but now, for the first time in my life, it's actually true. It's five in the evening, but it's still 95, easy, the air hot and dry. I am dehydrated and out of water. I'm essentially crippled. I am stuck in the Golan Heights, thirty-five kilometers from anything, and if a car doesn't stop in the next couple of hours, I are going to pass out from dehydration, and that will be that.

The worst part is that it was all my own fault. As my mother and more than one ex-girlfriend has told me, in varying tones-of-voice, I don't always make the best decisions. When I decided I was going hiking in the Golan, I talked to some people and went, alone, with a backpack, a few days' food, and a road map. Just like that. This already might not have been my best example of good judgment, but at least I've done this sort of thing before. But there was one other problem: there aren't really buses in the Golan. If you want to get around without a car—which, silly me, I had thoughtlessly forgotten—you have to tramp, or hitchike.

The problem with relying on random stranger to drive you around is that you are relying on a random stranger to pick you up. That sentence sums up the twofold problem with hitchhiking. The first one is what people think is dangerous. The second is what actually is.

One, which most people worry about, is the 'random stranger' part. You are proposing getting into a car with someone you do not know and trusting them to take you where they say they will. This is obviously risky. But this doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea. What it means is standing back from the car when it pulls up, profiling the driver like you're manning a metal detector at DFW Airport. White or black--okay, they're Jews. You probably get in. Dark skinned could be Druse, Jewish, Arab. Galilee Arabs are notorious for kidnappings. You don't get in.

It means carrying a road map in your pack and studying it, religiously, to know what towns are nearby, so you know where you're going and if a driver is taking you where he says he is. It means keeping your eyes on the road and a knife in your pocket, just in case. It means being cautious on the side of paranoid. But this side of hitchhiking is a problem of risk, not danger. If you're alert and careful, you're usually fine.

No, the really, subtly dangerous thing about hitchhiking is the second part. You are relying on someone you do not know to pick you up. Now, in most places where people tramp, this is not an issue. In Israel proper, even in the West Bank, there are regular, heavily subsidized buses. You may be waiting a while, but one will come. But in a place like the Golan, if a car doesn't stop, you have no options. You can wait or start walking.

Two days before, I had spontaneously caught one of the rare buses north from Jerusalem to Qazrin, unofficial capital of the Golan Heights. In what proved to be a horrible decision, I went wearing my old pair of hiking sandals instead of something crazy like, oh, shoes. I rode up into the Golan, got off the bus about ten kilometers south of Qazrin, spent the night sleeping--for reasons that are another story altogether--on the back of a tank, then set off hiking the next morning. By the end of that first day, the balls of my feet were already beginning to blister from cheap rubber, and tears in the straps were rubbing the tops of my feet raw. The second day I did the Nahal Zavitan hike, a punishing six hour ordeal of steep climbs and really pretty views. I finished at another trailhead, caught a ride back to Qazrin with a stunningly attractive Israeli woman and her silent boyfriend . . . and there my troubles began.

I had two really big problems, both results of my own stupidity. One, I had very little water. I had enough space to carry five liters, but at the end of the trailhead, I had drunk my fill and (stupidly) filled only one liter back up. This wasn't going to last, and there was no place to get more. Second--less pressing, but ultimately as serious--I couldn't walk. It wasn't just that I was tired—I was, but I could have gone on a while. But the stress of two days of hiking and my cheap sandals had made my soles a mass of blisters. The straps had actually rubbed the skin away from the top and sides of my feet. Every step was agonizing.

Neither of these would have been a problem, had anyone stopped for me there, on the outskirts of Qazrin. No one did. I don't entirely blame them: I wouldn't have picked up a single, young man either, backpack or no. But they still didn't stop.

Qazrin is on a minor road, 9088, that connects to another, Highway 90, which is more of an artery—it goes from the Golan to a major intersection near Tzfat before heading up north to the Upper Galil and Kiryat Shmona. That was going to be my best bet to get a ride, but it was about five miles away. I didn't have much choice. I started walking.

But before I could start, I dug into my first aid kit and covered the worst spots on my feet with band-aids. This wasn't really enough to solve the problem, but it made walking bearable. Every kilometer or so, the band-aids would fall off, and I would have to replace them. By the time I got to the interchange, I was out of water. My feet were bleeding in places. It was still early, around three in the afternoon—the benefit to getting up at 5 is that you finish early. I threw my pack down to sit...and sat, and sat. No one stopped.

I had no options. The feeling was almost sublime; it sounds odd to say this now, but it felt like absolute liberation. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't walk the thirty-five kilometers to Tzfat—I couldn't even walk back to Qazrin. Also, more walking was about the best way to get even more dehydrated. I could only wait. Talk about in God's hands. I could only hope the big guy didn't drop me.

Needless to say, a car eventually stopped, although it took a few hours and I was near to passing out. And needless to say, I didn't end up kidnapped or killed. It took me five tramps and a short bus ride to get to Tzfat, but I made it. I had nowhere to stay there, either, and when I got there, I stumbled around barefoot because my feet hurt so bad . . . but those are other stories.

No, what stays with me now, a few days later, and what may stay with me forever, is that feeling of absolute dependence. Not powerlessness—that's what strikes me now. I should have felt powerless, but I didn't. It was a specific feeling, like suddenly I wasn't in the driver's seat anymore. And I wonder, now, sitting at my computer, how much any of us really are. How much we're just yanked around by puppeteers acting out their own private dramas. Out there, in the middle of no-place, I felt something, I can't say what, and I feel it even now.