Dead Sea Rolls (7/6/2008)

"When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan was four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety miles long, and so crooked that a man does not know which side of it he is on half the time. In going ninety miles it does not get over more than fifty miles of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New York."
- Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad."

My bus sat on the Allenby -- or King Hussein -- Bridge, suspended over the Jordan River, arguably the most legendary stream in the world. I'd been told it wouldn't meet my expectations, particularly after a week on the Nile: Twain had said it wasn't any wider than Broadway, and I knew that subsequent diversions of its flow to irrigate the Galilee had rendered it smaller still. But nevertheless... I wasn't ready for the minisculeness I saw that Wednesday. At the point where it "flows" into the Dead Sea, just south of the bridge, the Jordan is barely wider than a sidewalk. It hardly moves; the plant life, scarce in the desert, hangs over the water and makes it nearly indiscernible through the leaves. If it weren't for historical precedent, I wouldn't have thought it a river -- more like Jordan Marsh.

The Jordan is the largest tributary of the Dead Sea, which had been a backdrop for much of my trip. Everyone who had been to the region told me to go -- a float in the Dead Sea, they contended, was a Middle East must on par with Petra, the Pyramids, or the Via Dolorosa. After visiting, it's hard to disagree: bobbing in the Dead Sea is truly one of the most otherworldly travel experiences.

At 1378 feet (and counting) below sea level, the sea is a whopping 30 percent salt, which is more than eight times saltier than any ocean. The salinity is a function of the region's desert climate, the depth below sea level, and the lack of outlets for the seawater. Put simply, the Jordan and other rivers pour water and minerals into the sea; when the water evaporates in the extreme heat, the minerals remain and crystallize into salt. Compounded over millions of years, the sea has gained so much salt that no life (algae, bacteria, fish, et al.) can survive. Dead, dead, dead.

What surprised me most was the effort you have to extend not to float -- if you are idiotic enough to dunk your full body underwater, the sea will force you back to the top as you writhe in Oedipan eye-gouging pain (I didn't try this, by the way). Even to stay prostrate on your back demands attention, since the currents catch your limbs and flip you like a rotisserie. When the water is calmer, you can have your way with it: I did stomach crunches in the Dead Sea. When the novelty wears thin, the nearby spas are chocked with mud baths and sulfur showers which clear out your pores: For you New Zealand lovers, it's a bit like showering in Rotorua's hot springs. And of course, anything quasi-New Zealand is partially divine.

The next morning, we drove south along the Dead Sea shores in search of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities which by definition, shouldn't be "findable" per se. (God, in what for you or me would be a "mid-life crisis moment," is said to have destroyed the two cities with fire and brimstone after Abraham couldn't find 10 innocent people there. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson cited similar causality for 9/11 and Katrina.) Admittedly, there's not much to see other than the stunning landscape -- salt mountains shooting hundreds of feet to east left, salt mines and the azure sea to the west. One breakaway salt pillar has been dubbed "Lot's wife" after the story of Mrs. Lot who got the itch to witness the fire and brimstone, turned around, and was turned into a salt pillar. (However, if this one is REALLY Mrs. Lot, then she was about 30 feet tall and, er, about 10 feet wide. Use your imagination.)

In perhaps a greater tragedy, the Dead Sea is shrinking significantly. With water from the Jordan and other rivers being diverted for Israeli and Jordanian agriculture, the sea has been evaporating at a staggering rate: in 2007 alone, the water table sank by a full meter. While environmentalists have been racing to replenish the sea with water from the Red Sea (Better Dead than Red!), the future is remarkably uncertain.

Next time: Is there balm in Gilead? I don't know. But is there balm in Galilee? Well, now...