"Cowboy Field"

Ein Yorqe'am Feb. 2005 003, originally uploaded by efroymson.

The Kibbutz near here is called Sde Boqer which translates as "Cowboy Field". (For those of you with Hebrew comparable to mine, you may be wondering why that is not "morning field", and it is because Bo'ker is not Bo-ker' ...) From this picture you can see why. The Bible mentions the wilderness of Zin, but you wouldn't know that they were talking about something that looks like the deserts of New Mexico or Arizona. It was literally staggering when I first looked out at this.

Of course a lot of this trip has been surprising. For example, it is difficult to reconcile the luscious green fields of the Northern Negev with the word "desert". It is one thing to read about the Israeli pioneers "making the desert bloom" and another to look out at it from the window of your car.

Obviously this section of desert has not been made to bloom, nor is that likely.