Desert Reflections: Life, Loss, and the Israel Trail

The Israel Trail makes its way north, from the foot of Mt Tzafahot on the Eilat shore, to the heart of the Negev. Here, the vast desert fills the horizon, and the heart expands. Kilometers fly by as one can walk for hours without seeing a living soul, only acacia trees, ibex and caper bushes — as well as a single pair of palm trees, in Nahal Raham.

Israel, a year and a quarter since the October 7 massacre, does not know its soul. Yes, hate-filled and vengeful, but a moment before that — and for years to come — engulfed in endless grief and mourning. What does the vast desert have to do with the rivers of blood spilled here? Thank God that one can walk for hours without seeing a living soul.

The stickers are seen repeatedly: on each one a picture, a brief quote, and a pair of dates. Dates that always span too few years. The heart aches: who even got to make it to their twentieth birthday? They are everywhere, the stickers: on tin barrels in the middle of nowhere and on geological explanatory signs, inside carefully positioned water culverts and on landmarks. Walk the Trail and meet the desert, run away from everything and not know your soul.

Even in the middle of the desert, this is how it’s like. Rivers of blood as part of life here, alongside grief and memory.

A teenager, months short of being drafted, walks some Trail sections on his own. We don’t talk, as quietness fits the desert and those who walk alone don’t do it to develop a conversation. Afterwards we talk a little, enough to understand how completely different we are: the one who makes sure to stop resting before ascents, and the one who stops only after them.

I asked if the parents weren’t worried — after all, on his own — and he pointed to the satellite phone they insisted on. The heart immediately expands with the realization that this is not about cold technology: it is parental care for a beloved son, a shielding blanket accompanying him, guiding his footsteps towards peace, protecting him from all and any calamities. After all, he was yet to make it to his twentieth birthday.

In the morning at the overnight campsite, the cadets of some pre-army preparatory program (mechina) were going through their pretend-army motions. Madness-as-normality. Teens on a hiking trip in the desert, why do pretend-army? And they sang lines I immediately recognized: “Yes, yes, who dreamed back in the classroom, when we learned to recite: ‘Upon your walls, Jerusalem, I have set guardians’, that the day would arrive, and I would be one of them”. It was impossible not to cry, and again a few hours later, when coming across — at the magnificent viewpoint just below Mt Sh’horet — the sticker of Ben Zussman (19.10.2001–3.12.2023) and the short quote from the letter he left: “Jerusalem, I have set guardians, that the day would arrive, and I would be one of them.”

Walking the desert and experiencing life here in its full glory, walking the desert and feeling — on your skin and deep in your heart — how fragile life here is. After all, not every calamity can be protected from. The trail is long and so is memory, but even the longest path can, in the end, drown in an ocean of blood and sadness.

Gaza is much smaller and the number of its dead much greater, and I don’t even know if there are any paths left in it at all.

Romi Gonen, who survived courageously and against all odds, returned after a year and a quarter of captivity in Gaza. She wrote that “there is life after death.” And when she climbed back from the grave, alive, an entire country collapsed in tears, speechless with astonishment and happiness. A ray of light. Perhaps, after all, there is a glimmer of hope.

The rivers of blood spilled here will shape our lives for years to come — the lives of those lucky enough to celebrate their twentieth birthday. The ground already saturated with blood, the scars on body and soul to slowly heal, grief and memory to remain. The future will be shaped by the shadows of the current horror. What will it look like?

Kilometers fly by as one walks for hours.

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Originally published in Hebrew in Haaretz on January 30, 2025.