The Headwaters of History

A clear, tiny stream sings to itself among the stones. Cupping my hands into the cool waters, it is hard to believe that this is the source of so much — the source of life for millions of people for thousands of years, the source of the three great monotheistic religions, the source of serenity and war, of healing and harm, the sacred source of the holiest of holy rivers, the Jordan.

I am in northeastern

Israel, just one mile from the Lebanese border, three from the Syrian, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, the 9,286-foot, snow-capped peak that dominates the Golan Heights. Near the base of Hermon there is a ledge of soft limestone from which flows the Dan, named for the seventh tribe of ancient Israel.  It is the largest tributary of the Jordan, and the beginning of a journey that has shaped the whole of the world.

Magic Spawns Myth

I don't believe in spirits, but this place is magic. The sun's rays splash across the rippling waters, and there seems to be a sympathy between static and spirit, between animate and inanimate, an interchange of forms. A rock becomes a root, a lizard melts into a stone, effervescent water turns to sparkling wine, myth begets history, and reality forms fable.

The Jordan River is cited nearly 200 times in the Bible. In Genesis, Lot looked up "and saw the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the Lord." When Moses led his people to the Promised Land, wandering 40 years through the wilderness, he found its edge at the Jordan River. Joshua parted the waters of the Jordan and the Israelites crossed to the land of milk and honey. Jesus was born in the watershed of the Jordan and was baptized at its shores, when the spirit of God "descended like a dove" upon him. Jesus performed miracles on the Sea of Galilee, and he died near a wadi that feeds the Jordan. It is by this river the companions of the prophet Mohammed are buried.

Today fully half the world's population — Christians, Muslims, Jews and others — can trace their spiritual DNA, their religious cosmologies, to the sweet waters of this modest spill.

After touching the Dan we make our way down a trail of laurel, broad-boughed sycamores and Syrian ash trees, and fields of yellow oleanders — and yellow signs that warn not to wander beyond a flimsy fence because of land mines. Though this land is paradisiacal, as wistful as any dream of rapture on earth, it straddles some of the most contested real estate in the world. There is plenty of seismic activity, too: the 200 mile-long Jordan rides down the top of the great Syrian-African rift valley, a geological crack that is forever being pulled apart.

There are three primary sources of the Jordan, all emanating from Mount Hermon, the Dan being the largest. Another is the Hasbani, which bubbles up from the Lebanon side of the border, a perimeter presently closed. The third and easternmost source is perhaps the loveliest of all, the Banias, which issues beneath a giant limestone grotto with an arched and magnificently fluted roof, surrounded by Greek and Roman ruins.

The Banias bursts beneath the base as a full-born river, as though the earth could simply no longer contain it, and then cascades over a series of faultless falls rimmed with watercress. The spot is so seductively beautiful it is easy to see why the Greeks built a temple here to Pan. They knew the headwaters were holy.

Source of the Jordan

I've come to this fountain with my old friend Jim Slade, a man who has spent a lifetime exploring rivers, and who holds the world record for the greatest number of first descents, negotiating down stretches of river that have never been run before. Together we've navigated upper pieces of the Indus, Zambezi, Yangtze, Euphrates, and Blue Nile, but Jim's specialty is "Source to Sea," making linear dives from the first spark to the final sigh. As the springs that form the Jordan all gush from a single snow-sloped mount, Jim wants to start at the peak.

A Jewish legend tells that when God delivered the tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai, a hill named Hermon appeared before him and complained of favoritism, bursting into tears. As consolation, God made Hermon the tallest mountain in the land, and gave it a crown of snow. Its tears became the Jordan River.

It is not necessary to "climb" Hermon. After the 1967 Six-Day War, a war fought in part over water rights to the Jordan, the Israelis built a ski resort on the mountain. We take a lift to almost 7,000 feet, but can't go much farther. There is an Israeli Army station, and beyond that a

United Nations-controlled sector. The summit belongs to

Syria.

Still, from this vantage, the seams of the Sea of Galilee can be descried. It is a hazy day — perhaps dust from the Sahara, not that far away across the Red Sea. We are in T-shirts, but there is a smudge of snow on this flank, and Jim presses his bare hand into it. The melt will carry down the River Jordan.

Confluence of Streams

The waters of Mount Hermon unite a few miles downstream, forming the Jordan proper. It seems an inauspicious beginning.  There is nobody about, just a tractor in the distance, and beyond that a kibbutz that claims to be the birthplace of the Birkenstock sandal. A rope swing hangs from an oak tree by the river, inviting a splash, but our guide says it is forbidden. The purling river feels like an invitation to something dangerous, forbidden, irresistible.

Most rivers serve as thoroughfares for vessels, bringing people together. But the Jordan has always been a border — something to cross to get to a better land, a healthier time, a home.

Our goal is not to cross, but to descend the Jordan, in the spirit of its Hebrew name  — Yarden, the Descender. And if successful, we will be among the few who have made the trek from source to sea, connecting people of all stripes and environments of every kind in a single line and mission of elemental peace.