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Today was the last day! This was a regular day on the trail through orchards, scrambling down terrace walls (for me anyway, the others took a more sensible route), spotting old trees, knicking fruit and enjoying the view. I keep saying we enjoyed the view, and I keep posting panoramas. It must be quite boring. Really you have to go. You have to see it, you have to walk through this place and earn those views, panting at the top of a climb seeing it all spread out in front of you. Whilst I said it was a regular day I should mention though that we were again reminded of the history in the area. We started off up an ancient trade road where Romans used to go on the way over the mountains to Damascus in Syria. In the winter though they could not use it as 5-6m of snow carpets the ground.
We had a bigger group today because the president of the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association, his wife and a few other people joined in. We also had a local guide, Firaz, which is what the LMTA encourages people to have if they go for a walk. I had a few chats with him which was nice as he was about my age and spoke English well. We talked about what we did for work. We talked about sport. I asked him if he skied. He said not anymore, he injured his knee once. I mentioned how I did the same cycling and we talked about how knee injuries never seem to go away. Sounds simple, but it was nice to experience some mundane commonality amongst all this difference I had encountered on the walk. Reminds me of the observation I made at the end of my trip through Japan.
Firaz also told us about a planting effort he participated in. They planted 10,000 juniper in the area but unfortunately these were mostly eaten by nomads' herds. An example of these nomads is actually the kind Muslim woman I mentioned a couple of posts back. They pay the municipality a fee to graze their herds in the district, the total collected being $67,000/year from all groups. Because of this revenue the municipality is reluctant to put in place measures to protect plantings like the one he was involved in. Hopefully they can come to an agreement where saplings are protected until they are tall enough to survive the attention of a herd of goats and the nomads still have something to fatten their livestock on. It must have been a real disappointment seeing 10,000 trees down the drain, I wonder how long it took to plant them!
I should mention another idea for promoting the trail that I had along the way. The LMT also set up the Baskinta Literary Trail. I'm a proud member of the Kuwait Writing Club. Retreats are good for writers' minds. Why don't we get together and arrange an international writer's retreat along the trail, with a workshop or two to get the creative juices flowing? I'm going back to Lebanon this week, I'll take a pen and a notepad and start this retreat myself. I've got lots of things that need writing. Let's see what comes out.
TRIP LOWLIGHT
To finish off, a highlight and a lowlight of the trip both occurred on the final day. Both happened above our heads. The lowlight was seeing two flyovers of F16s from Israel. They were very high up and so I had to trust the others that that's what type of plane they were. Also today we heard the buzzing of a propeller plane and I was told this time that it was a drone. It was as high as the F16s and quite hard to spot. Perhaps they were checking in case the Lebanese Rocket Society had reformed and was going to conduct another test. This was the first time on the walk and in my trip through Lebanon that I had experienced their conflict with Israel first hand. It was the first time in my life I had seen anything related to Israel first hand, come to think of it. Issues with this country have been happening throughout my life, played out every week almost on the news. Naturally I am curious about it and why it has been the subject of such a prolonged conflict. I will write a future blog post about my experiences discussing this country with people from the Middle East, but suffice to say I never realised until now that so many places do not recognise Israel (map). Some of them, such as Lebanon, are quite adamant about it and would not allow me through immigration if my passport contained an Israel stamp.
TRIP HIGHLIGHT
The highlight of the trip also occurred whilst looking up into the sky. We saw the most stunning pattern of migratory birds I have ever seen. Usually any flight of such birds is awe inspiring. They fly high, and have a V shape or are strung out following each other. You might hear their distant calls and wonder how far they have come, whether they are tired and how far they have to go. They often seem calm. Today we saw migratory birds whose flight had a very complex pattern. There was the standard V shape leading, then a long tail down the spine of the flight extending a long way out the back like that of a sting ray. Then filling in the wings, if you like, either side of this tail were a number of smaller V shapes. This was all arranged symmetrically. It was a frankly majestic display of organisation by an animal I had never thought would be capable of something like that. It seemed as though each bird knew where it was and had in its mind the pattern of the whole flight, maintaining its position relative to the other members with great precision to produce this configuration. It was so different to what I'm used to seeing in nature, but that's probably because I haven't seen much nature. Another wonder of migratory animals is their navigation skills. These storks, for example, fly from the tip of Africa right the way up to northern Europe. It would be interesting to know if the migration each year follows exactly the same route, showing evidence of using specific land based information such as landmarks or if the routes are more a reflection of general environmental (eg land cover type) and climatic changes.
I'll leave it there, as it's obvious the mission of the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association has been achieved. I had some moments of wonderment in nature, thought about how big it is and realised how small I am. Except for one of the apples I found :-)
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