Flying Kites at the End of the World

“A desert rose from Vegas to nowhere….” is always the song that runs through my head whenever we head south to the Negev, except here I should change the song to “A desert rose from Dimona to nowhere”. Dimona is a peripheral town which the government and the rest of Israel seem to forget, left alone to fend for its economic survival. In the backdrop of the harsh desert landscape it was originally established to absorb the waves of immigrants arriving in Israel, those who where dreaming of a land of milk and honey not camels and sand. The Negev is the only place in Israel where there are wide open spaces, unobstructed by towns or littered by strings of utility poles, here is the last frontier, where the Bedouins live in sprawled shanty towns and the rule of law is a bit more flexible. Like Israeli’s like to say, to get to the Negev drive to the end of the world and then take a right.

What did we want to do at the end of the world? To fly kites of course because there is no better place. Fall is one of the best times to visit the Negev, although the wild flowers are not in bloom, the crowds have retreated indoors and the temperatures are perfect. So last weekend, with the car so packed the boys were balled up with their chins on their knees, we drove south of Dimona and set up camp near the large crater (maktesh ha gadol). Although we arrived late, the stars sprinkling the sky, we immediately lit the campfire and I made my first cast iron pot meal, Osh Plov. Rami Gilboa and his wife Dorit are the ones who inspired me to cook with a poyke and I am so glad they did.

We don’t usually go hiking with kites but my mother in law, Yehudit just came back from a trip to China and brought the boys the most fantastic colorful kites. We never in our life had any luck with flying kites, each attempt a complete catastrophe; kites we didn’t know how to put together, kites never taking off, kites taking off completely when the string snapped, kites crashing, kites crashing into other kites. It’s quite an embarrassing record considering that in the 1950′s as my grandfather mentioned to me, any boy could fly a kite. Of course my son volunteered for us to make a kite for the annual school kite competition (don’t ask).

Bright and too early the next morning we drank our ritual morning tea, packed our bags and headed up to a landscape that looked like it was created by Dr. Seuss. There we found the highest point and took out our kites, and miracles of miracles all three of them managed to fly high above the world.