Fixing a Hole in the Holy Land

With Earth Day upon us, we head down to the last in the trinity of public access points on the lower Jordan River, Kasr el Yehud, just above where the Jordan disembogues into the Dead Sea.  Some believe this is the place where Joshua parted the waters of the Jordan and crossed over to Jericho, the oldest and lowest city on earth. And many believe this is the spot where Jesus was baptized by John, though there is disagreement as to which side; Jordanians claim it on the eastern banks, while (in a rare occasion of consensus) both the Israelis and the Palestinians aver it was on the western side. The pocketbooks of pilgrims can motivate accords.

There are several hundred people gathered by the river, pilgrims from Greece, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Canada and Ethiopia, a babble of languages and cultures with a river and belief in common. The Jordan here is not pure — as we have seen, it is mixed with sewage from upriver — yet these pilgrims have no hesitation in making a ceremonial dunking, a rebaptism. When I ask one pilgrim she responds, "The river is unclean because of our sins." Even in secular interpretations, she is right.

We head south, passing a biblical tableaux of donkeys, camels and ibex by the road, and enter the shimmering basin of the lowest point on earth, the saltiest lake, the terminus of the Jordan, the Dead Sea. We're thirsty in the dry heat, so we turn into the first restaurant and hotel on the northern end of the sea, the Lido. But there is no refreshment here, no water, and no lake. All we find is a desolate ruin, the remains of a 1930s British resort. The closest thing to the Dead Sea is a fresco rendition of a Crusader map that stretches across a holey wall. The real Dead Sea is over a mile away. The Dead Sea is dying, and the Lido is a crumbling temple of testament.

The Dying Sea

For nearly 2,000 years, the contour and coastline of the Dead Sea remained virtually unchanged from the days when the famous Dead Sea scrolls were stashed in nearby cave. But in the last 50 years, since the great diversions upstream to irrigate a growing economy, the river flow that fed the lake has decreased to 8 percent of its former pour. The Dead Sea is dropping about a yard a year, and its surface area is just a third of what it once was. The Global Nature Fund has declared the Dead Sea "Threatened Lake of the Year" for 2006.

Moving down the road, past a parade of "Danger" signs, we come to a place that looks like a detonated mine field. It is a garden of sinkholes: As the lake has receded, it has sucked the water from the underbelly of the shoreline, causing the earth to collapse. There are over 1,000 sinkholes on the west side of the Dead Sea, and more appear every day.

Planners once envisioned a string of resorts along the Dead Sea, but there is a ban against development now. Sinkholes have swallowed campgrounds, closed a military camp, and caused the evacuation of a date plantation. Route 90, the main road, will soon have to be moved up into the surrounding mountains, away from the flatlands. "Sinkholes are nature's revenge to man's acts," says Gidon Bromberg, our companion from Friends of the Earth Middle East.

Dov Litvinoff agrees. He was the manager of the popular Dead Sea Spa at Kibbutz Ein Gedi in 1991 and found himself "running after the sea." He bought a little tractor tram to ferry clients from the spa to the Dead Sea shoreline, but left the job when the commute stretched to over a mile.

We head over to the spa, and ride the little train to the salt-coated beach at 1,368 feet below ocean level, the low point of our lives.  Even here we find pilgrims of a different sort, seekers of personal rehabilitation, solace and therapeutic immersion. They are wandering about looking like creatures from the Black Lagoon, slathered in the celebrated black Dead Sea mud. Cleopatra herself is said to have used this muck for her beauty treatments, though there is scant evidence on this beach that the stuff works.

Bringing the Dead Sea to Life

Jim Slade and I reach down to touch the waters, symbolically ending our descent of the Jordan from summit to sea, and then go for a swim — really more of a bob — in the heavy brine, ten times saltier than the oceans. Since the Dead Sea itself has no egress — water would have to flow uphill to the ocean — the evaporation of its tributary waters over millennia has reduced this lake to a salty stew. Once our feet are extended it's hard to bring them back down, as if the whole body is suddenly made of cork. It's a singular sensation, as if supported by an unseen power, and one that more people would love to experience. And many more would, come a greater stability and more infrastructure in the region.

World Heritage Site, and Israel, Jordan and Palestine, the stakeholders, have expressed real interest.

The designation would not only ensure proper environmental management and conservation, but would attract more tourists — religious, historical and environmental. These are the sorts of travelers who become emotionally invested in a place they visit, and become active constituents for its preservation.

Jim and I have seen this cycle in action. Over 20 years ago, we shared the first descent of the Tatshenshini River, and began taking first dozens, then hundreds of people down the river through the remote St. Elias Range of southeastern Alaska and British Columbia. When an open-pit copper mine threatened to ruin the area's beauty, the collective protests and pressure of our invested river-runners turned that river corridor into a model transboundary park.

The experience is not unique. Gidon himself earned his environmental credentials working diligently, and successfully, to save the threatened Franklin River in Australia. Now he's bringing those skills and passions to bear on a region already well-known but no less endangered.

The key to it all, Gidon believes, is as simple as the hydrological cycle. Nature tourism depends upon a healthy environment. This type of tourism, if developed properly, can become an economic alternative to agriculture, which supplies just 2 percent of Israel's GDP but accounts for 90 percent of the water diversion of the Jordan's flow. If farmers divert less, more clean water pours down the Jordan, the Dead Sea returns, and this storied ecosystem attracts more tourists.

Gidon and his compatriots have helped raise global awareness, influence governments, and engage locals in their common issue. Along the way a blueprint for larger initiatives may be drawn. If peoples of different cultures and religions can come together to peacefully manage the Jordan and its storied lakes, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, maybe they'll be able to peacefully manage everything else, and the miraculous might just become the norm.