Liquid Lightning in the Hula Valley

When the Jordan River drops below sea level, it seems to suffer from a case of the bends, losing control of itself as it plunges down one of the wildest sections of whitewater in the world, a non-stop, seven-mile sluice of class III-IV rapids.

The Jordan here drops almost 100 feet per mile, steeper than almost any commercially raftable river in the U.S. It's like riding liquid lightning. And yet this dizzying ride is barely known outside of

The rapids begin just downstream of the Hula Valley, just beyond the Daughters of Jacob bridge, near the remains of a Crusader fort. History is thick around here. Until the middle of the 20^th century, this section contained marsh land and a small lake created by a dam of natural rock — the "waters of Merom" in the Bible, a thicketed slough lurching with lions and malaria-bearing mosquitoes, as well as the greatest concentration of aquatic plants in the Middle East, 18 species of fish, and a rich flock of migratory birds.

Jewish pioneers in the newly formed state of Israel drained much of the swamp in mid-50s, hoping to turn 15,000 acres of fertile swampland into prime farmland. But like many well-meaning schemes of the era, unforeseen consequences turned this plot bad. Birds and wildlife abandoned the once-lush haven. As the moist peat soil dried, a series of spontaneous subterranean fires burst forth, burning bushes throughout the valley, razing the precious topsoil. Worse, nitrates and phosphates that were once filtered by the swamp washed into the Sea of Galilee, polluting Israel's major freshwater reservoir. By the early 1990s the Hula Valley was a full-blown environmental disaster that threatened the health and well being of millions.

In 1994, the largest green organization in the country, the Keren Kayemeth Leisrael-Jewish National Fund (the same group that initially drained the swamp) resurrected the Hula Valley with a series of canals that rewatered the valley, and created a 250-acre shallow lake, Hula Agmon.

The Jordan River has always been a major refueling stop for migrating birds, but now an estimated 500 million birds — some 400 species — pass through here as they migrate up the Rift Valley from Africa to Europe and back. Along with flocks of pelicans, herons and ducks, about 30,000 cranes arrive in the Hula Valley each autumn. In fact, about 10,000 have decided they like this sweet-water nature reserve enough to stay for the winter.

Ecotourism in the Promised Land

An unanticipated benefit of this rebirth has been ecotourism. The park headquarters teems with bird watchers and all manner of bird-watching vehicles, from canoes and kayaks to golf carts and strollers to mountain bikes, and of course air-conditioned buses. There are flocks of tourists here, but they are virtually all Israelis, as this little, but profoundly important, environmental success story is so little known to the rest of the world as to almost be a secret.

Like the nature reserve itself, rafting on the Jordan is little known outside of Israel, so Jim Slade and I are expecting to meet a guide with no acquaintance with wild rivers outside the Holy Land. But as we approach the warehouse of Neharot Expeditions, we see a gallery of photographs of familiar international rivers— Ethiopia's Omo, the Tatshenshini in Alaska, the Watut in New Guinea, the Coruh in Turkey — that Jim and I ran as first descents. "I have been following in your footsteps for years," says our guide, Lahav Blouh. We hug, kindred spirits of the river.

The put-in is below Meyzad Ateret, the only dam on the upper Jordan. For a few shekels the hydroengineer at the dam opens the gate, and out spills about 600 cubic feet per second, enough to lift our boats and propel us downstream.

In the Flow Again

Jim and I alternate captaining the raft for the seven-mile run, and we find ourselves in a non-stop barrage of commands to the other paddlers: "FORWARD! BACKPADDLE! LEFT — NO, RIGHT! HARD FORWARD! REALLY HARD FORWARD! WOMAN OVERBOARD! PULL HER BACK IN!"

We carom and pitch down the slew, barely in control, broaching boulders, highsiding to the razor's edge of capsize, hosing into trees and bulrushes. The river goes insane, chaos frothing, pluming, skibbling around and doubling back on itself like rogue fireworks. At one point the rapids' thunder peals up the burled gorge louder than before and I fear a falls we can't fathom when suddenly two Apache helicopters roar over us, so close we can feel the rotorwash. "Friends of mine on exercise," Lahav explains, and I exchange a look of astonishment with Jim— on no other river have we seen such avifauna.

A few hundred yards from the Sea of Galilee we pull over and make our way through a flotilla of inflatables to a ferry bus. About 5,000 Israelis raft this wild section each year, and many thousands more float a gentle family stretch of the Jordan, yet there is not a foreigner to be seen.

The Jordan we have experienced so far is wet with contour and risk, layered with resonance, affluent in its beauty, evoking temptation and trepidation at once, yet irresistibly pulling us downwards toward the Sea of Galilee, into swirls of history, narratives and lore.