57 Earth

In the beautiful days that we enjoyed after the stormy, cold weather I take bicycle trips in the fields and between the orchards. During the cold and stormy week, when snow fell in Jerusalem and on the Hermon, I was sick with the flue. Since then I have not yet gone back to swimming, but I again take short bicycle trips instead of my daily 40 minute swim. Lately I bought a bicycle speedometer and found out that my short trip is about 10 kilometers.

In the hours before the sun sets, when the sun is low on the horizon, it is possible to see wonderful sights in the fields. Today, towards the end of my trip, I climbed trough the orchards of Kibbutz Mishmarot. The earth dries out quickly and the paths that were muddy a week ago turn sandy very fast. In the meantime the earth retains the marks that the tractors created in the mud, and in the low sun the cracks in the red sandy soil look like polished gold.

I stop and drink some water. I bend down to the ground and the gold color surrounds me. The path is very wide here. The earth looks like a little desert, cut off from the orchards that surround it. Look at this golden earth. Yesterday it was a puddle of mud and tomorrow it will be a pile of sand. Today it is a landscape of wavy gold.