Death Wish in the Golan Heights

We set up camp in the dark in a stand of trees beside the road. “Scorpions,” someone announced as we ate dinner; shining our lights at the ground we found scorpions crawling everywhere. We moved camp to ground that seemed free of scorpions. Not having tent or hammock I slept on the elevated surface of a large flat rock. In the morning, my social anxiety  getting the better of me, I decided to leave this group and hike alone towards a high distant hill top in the east in what had once been Syria. I set off down the road and turned off into the field and came at once to barbwire that had a sign that read in Hebrew, Arabic and English: “Danger Mines!” I stepped through the barbwire and continued hiking. The sage green fields climbing upwards glowed beneath heavy cloud cover; it was lightly raining; there was no one anywhere. I knew vaguely that I was walking in minefield, but perhaps I did not believe it; or, more likely, I was very stupid. I have often been stupid in my life; I’m not sure if this is mere stupidity, or if it is charged by some cunning antagonism in me that vies against my life: a death wish. Anyhow, rain shrouded the southern reaches of the blue hills where they turned into dark forest. Two animals ran from me as I approached, only visible by where the grass sprang as they passed; I would learn later that a near extinct species of wolf had been repopulating this no-man’s land. The grass shortened as the long plain of hill climbed upwards to the conical hilltop. Brass rifle casings littered the ground here and there, glowing aquamarine green. The dark slash cut into the hilltop was now revealed as a concrete bunker gun-emplacement. I found a melted metal fin-end to an RPG that I kept as souvenir. Scattered over the rising plain were rusting tanks. I wondered if stepping on a mine would kill me at once or if it would take days to die. The sun now began to pierce the ragged cloud cover and beams of light wandered over the distant hills to the north. I climbed on top of a collapsing tank with soviet insignia on the side. I did not know what war had taken place here. Nor was I aware that, were I to die, I would be just one more dumb casualty of this war.

Soviet Tank, Golan Heights, Israel, 2001