Holding On (copied from my old site)

I promised you folks another Israel story from my first trip there in 1996, and here it is. We were undergrads working in a consortium and getting Bible credits. Each morning we’d wake up early and head out from Kibbutz Snir (near the recently bombed Kiriyat Shimona) towards the border to Banias, the heart of the New Testament villages of Caesarea Philippi. We’d dig all morning, take a brunch break, and then dig until about 2PM. By that time the sun was too hot to work, but it was usually too hot for bugs as well, so the walk home was usually relaxing. This excludes, of course, the walk home I wrote about in my last “A Day in the Life” blog. If you haven’t read that, be sure to do so after this.

Anyway, our evenings were spent in the classroom, learning the history of the region, discussing our reading, and getting the latest update on our team’s preliminary conclusions from what we were unearthing every day. On the weekends and on a few occasions during the week, we toured. Of course, we’re with a collection of biblical professors and archaeologists from half a dozen schools, so it wasn’t a regular “Holy Land” tour. One of these regular tours actually takes you to a building in the Old City, point to something that vaguely resembles a handprint that hasn’t been covered over even when the rest of the wall has been re-plastered, and tells you, “This is where St. Peter rested against the wall in his anguish at denying Christ three times and wept.” The only problem with this amazing site, it that the building was built over 1000 years after Peter died. But, that’s the way some of those tours work. They show you what you want to see, and tell you what you want to hear. There’s actually very little of the Old City left from the first century.

Of course, there are still plenty of authentic sights in Israel, and many of them were day-trip distance from where we were staying. One of these sights is Mt. Hermon. Some scholars have suggested that Mt. Hermon is the sight of the Transfiguration, but it may not be. My personal conclusion is that it is not. But, we didn’t go there to see the unknown place of Christ’s glorification. We went there to see a castle.

It’s an old mountain top fortress atop the hill that catches the rain that becomes the Hermon and Dan rivers, which help form the Jordan River. An official Israeli site says:

"The Nimrod Fortress National Park graces the slopes of Israel’s highest mountain, Mount Hermon, above the Banias spring. The fortress overlooks the forested dales and magnificent landscape of the area. Nimrod Fortress was built in 1228 by the Ayyubi governor Al-Aziz ‘Othman as a preemptory strategic move. Frederick II’s army was headed from Acre to Damascus and Al-Aziz ‘Othman saw the fortress as a way of blocking the road to Frederick’s troops. After the royal sultan Baybars captured the fortress, he transformed it into a huge fortified complex."

The point of our story is that my friend and I decided that we were going to climb the outer wall of this fortress rather than go into it by the normal means, namely, the front gate. It was spontaneous sort of decision. We saw a small side tunnel near the gate and decided to explore it before doing anything else. It was a short passage that led to a rocky ledge overlooking a drop of several hundred feet. It is on the back left side of the castle as pictured above.

There was nothing really exciting about the spot, except for the view, and we weren’t ready to rush back to try to catch the rest of our group, which was wandering the structures above us. So, we decided to take a short cut. The wall seemed easy enough to scale. It was an intimidating 55-60 feet high, but there were good handholds, and we decided to race to the top.

To my credit, I did take note of the fact that if I were to fall off of the wall I would be broken in several places by the rocks below, and might even bounce off of them into the cannon. But, the wall really did look fairly easy to climb. So, upward we went, two stalwart adventurers in a race to the top of the fortress wall.

I climbed very well actually. I was lighter than my friend, and I seemed to have chosen the better path because in just a minute or two I was within a few feet of victory while he was a full body length below me (to my right). Then, I got stuck.

I’ll try to describe my position. My left hand had an inverted finger grip in a small crack between two stones in the wall. The toe of my right boot was on a 3/4-inch outcropping at about knee height, and my weight was mostly on my left leg, which was almost straight. My right hand was homeless! I couldn’t find anything to grab onto. I searched above me, thought about backtracking and realized that I wasn’t brave (or dumb) enough to try it, and then noticed the top of the wall, with it’s up and down formations to protect defenders while enabling them to attack those outside the wall. There were large square stones just within reach that I thought I might be able to wrap my fist around in order to conquer the last of the wall and enter the fortress.

So, I went for it. What else could I do? I felt like I couldn’t hold my position for long. I extended my left leg as much as I could, but my left hand began to slip. I tried to straighten my right leg, to “stand up” as they say, but I was getting shaky. Finally, I jumped. That is, I stood up on my right leg, completely releasing my left foot from the wall, held on as tightly as I’ve eve held anything with my left finger tips, and threw my right arm over the top of the slanted stone and around the capital stone on top of it. For a moment I felt that I’d won, and then the impossible happened…

This stone, the big one that had been sitting on top of this wall for almost 800 years, the one that had been designed to stay there until the wall below it collapsed,…This stone MOVED. It moved! I’m depending on it to make to the top, to be able to tell my friends and my kids about this climb in Israel one day in the future, to beat my friend to the top and not be broken into pudding at the bottom of the valley…It moved!

I freaked out! All of the blood in my body went cold. I couldn’t hold onto the rock, and my right hand lost its grip. I dropped back down, and hugged into the wall with my body and my right foot. My left hand suddenly got sweaty and I had to re-grip with the only thing that was holding me in place. I couldn’t find a place for my left foot, and it was a full ten seconds before my right hand found something that it could press against just to keep my from swinging out away from the wall and falling.

The whole world froze. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I could FEEL my heart beating in my ears! I focused on trying to breath without moving too much. I searched the wall. There was nowhere to go. I was sweating from every pore on my body. I’m not kidding; sweat broke out from nose to knees. I finally managed to calm myself enough to turn my head toward my right and find my friend on the wall below me. He was progressing nicely, but was still several feet from the summit. I said something brilliant like, “Hey, when you get to the top I could really use a hand.” Then, I just held on with everything I had, tried to relax, and waited for him to reach down from the top with his hand once he got there.

He got there. I lived. And, I learned a lot in that experience, about myself, about teamwork, about stupidity, and about keeping a grip.