Ancient tools in the Negev

Picking my way downhill through the trailhead.
Note the barbed wire. Don't go off trail.

This is the day my journey in Israel truly begins. My cousins and I set out on a hike through a canyon in the Negev. The trail is rugged and dusty, and along the way I have my first encounter with the omnipresent ancientness of Israel.

The canyon walls we descend are made of layers of milky-white chalk, soft, smoothed and whorled in many places by the desert's winds and sudden rains. Shot between the white chalk layers are chunky streaks of black flint. My cousin Jay, an adept amateur geologist, tells us that no one is really sure how flint forms. One thing's for certain, though, and that's that flint is a pretty darned cool rock, and it doesn't take us long to discover that it makes a nice blackboard for our chalk doodlings.

Miriam doodles a decorative "shalom!"

We take a moment to look up and down the canyon, which hasn't changed for millenia, and think of ancient Nabateans living here, making the same discovery for themselves. What messages did they leave on the rocks for each other? Was it strategically important to be able to write notes that could be erased? Rains long ago washed away any signs that might have been left behind, but there's plenty for us to imagine.

A scraper and a two-edged tool.
Someone may have made dinner with these long ago. 

Further along the trail, we came to a place littered with evidence of a more long-lasting use of the flint: as small hand tools. Once aware of them, it seemed that with every step we found another few palm-sized pieces of the flaky rock, with one or two sides chipped away to create a sharp, stony edge. These relics have withstood hundreds, maybe thousands of years here in a desolate desert canyon. The random discovery and admiration of them by random people from another continent and another time feels like feels like turning over the stones of human history.