current

Today we drove an hour south to Wadi Mugib. It is basically a sandstone gorge that empties into the Dead Sea at 410 meters below sea level. Another cool fact is that it is the lowest natural reserve in the world.

 

The dry season in Jordan has almost come to an end and we are anticipating rains beginning in November. Many of my friends have been sick with allergies and sinus infections resulting from the enormous amount of dust in the air. Amman feels like a desert city with few places of greenery provide respite for the dryness.
Friday was more of the same- hot and dry with a slight cooling breeze. We paid our entrance fee and strapped on our mandatory life jackets, laughing at the immediate paunch that these worn and scrunched-up vests added to our waists. Our good friends Doug and Sylvie came along, as well as one of Steve's work buddies.
We descended a long metal staircase and then looked up. Towering above and around was a sandstone gorge with a pale greenish-bluish river with noticeable current rushing past us. Light tan rocks scattered about the banks, along with a few struggling plants and spindly trees.
"That one doesn't have much hope of surviving here," remarked Doug as he nodded to a fern-like sapling already bending in the current.
We splashed along the foot-deep water bed until we came to our first overhang of rock. While Steve fished his ipod out of its double ziplock covering, we gazed around us, truly awed by the beauty of these looming sandstone cliffs made spectacular by erosion's grooves and patterns. We took pictures of one another, photos that witnessed how small we were in comparison to the mountaneous terrain around us.
Our walk would take roughly two hours- to the waterfall and back. Hardly a long distance, its challenge lay in the constant current that gave inertia to our footsteps and the several large boulders, worn smooth by time, that we would need to climb.
Within minutes, I felt like a child again, splashing my feet over rocks and feeling the coolish-warm water wash over my leggings. I glanced over at Steve and the smile on his face told me that he felt the same way.
At our first ascent, we waited while a small group of men huffed and pushed their way up the rock, using the blue knotted climbing rope. When it came turn for us to make our climb, I was struck by how little my feet slipped. The rock doesn't get much sunlight and the current is constant, so algae cannot grow.
I almost felt as if I couldn't make it up, but with my foot in the loop at the end of the rope, I could finally push myself up to the rock. We climbed this way, one by one, from one boulder, to a plateau, then to another set of rocks, until we reached the end of the trail. A series of three waterfalls roared and gushed into a pool about ten feet wide.

After we ventured gingerly under the falls for a few minutes, we began our trek back. Needless to say, it was much easier with the current. In the deeper parts, we lay on our backs and let the streams pull us as far as we could go or until we hit our bottoms on the rocky bed.
What an amazing experience!

soli deo gloria