On Friday, May 23, 2008, I went on a hike with friends to the Cedars of Jaj in the mountains above Jbeil (Byblos). While we could have just driven up the new road and walked a short trail to the cedar grove, we hiked in the hardest way we could find. In return for the hardships, we would see unspoiled areas that I didn’t even know existed in Lebanon.
We parked at the end of a road on the south side of the village of Jaj, below the last house. A car was parked there, and next to it was a tree under which and a man with a shotgun sat. As we were getting ready to start the hike, and with no consideration to other people, he fired an ear-piercing shot; luckily he missed. This did not bode well for the hike; were the mountains going to swarming with “hunters” shooting at anything that flies?
At 9:40 the boots hit the ground and we headed down a dirt road through orchards and fields in a broad valley; a farmer was plowing a terraced orchard with a tractor. We turned east along the stone wall of an orchard and headed into the higher mountains. There were many flowers in bloom; this was a Lebanese spring at its finest. We passed a relatively uncommon Acanthus syriacus in bloom. Especially notable were the Spanish Broom bushes (Spartium
junceum),which were covered in fragrant blooms. Thousands of them turned the hillsides bright yellow. Our rough trail zigzagged up the side of the mountain through oak trees before entering a hanging valley, Wadi A’aqbet el-Mjarr. A tall landmark juniper punctuated it. Here, there were some signs of a past forest fire, but otherwise the area was quite unspoiled, and all around us were hills covered with Aleppo pine forests.
We encountered a goat herder and his work dogs and, since we had a dog with us, we detoured up the right side of the wadi, encountering some rough terrain. Some of us carried out a long-distance conversation with the goat herder. He was surprised at two things that reflected a cultural divide: that we would take such a roundabout way to get to the cedars of Jaj when we could have just driven there, and that the dog with us was a pet and not a work dog.
Ancient terraces (singular Jal) climbed up the drainage of our wadi; it was like going up a giant staircase. There were some signs of abuse, mainly in overgrazing and some cut trees. Even these last signs of “civilization” tapered off as we entered the land of gray karst rock formations and went through the first sinkhole. We stopped for a break and looked at a huge Dog Rose bush (Rosa canina) with hundreds of white blooms; it was more like a tree. Behind us was a large, rocky pinnacle standing in the middle of the wadi, what in the western US would be
called a “butte.” As we climbed higher, the terrain became rockier and more distant views opened up. At the bottom of one shady sinkhole were peonies (Paeonia mascula) with huge, deep-red blooms.
We took another break under a tree to allow the dog to cool off. Higher up was a maze of fantastic karst rocks. Many displayed vertical lines formed by water erosion; they almost
looked like pipe organs. While this spectacular type of landscape has been shamelessly destroyed by gravel mining and real-estate development in other areas such as the Keserwan, here there was not so much as a dirt road to mar the view. There were fewer plants here, but that only made the ones there stand out. Some, such as ferns and succulent plants, grew out of cracks in the rocks.
We topped out at a ridge where we had a 360-degree view that included a few scattered cedar trees and the village of Jaj. We descended down the other side. We came across fresh dirt, broken rocks, and a dead uprooted tree. And yet, there were no signs to indicate that a bulldozer had made its way here. And the recent fighting had occurred dozens of kilometers away. Then it dawned on me: It was the result of a lightning strike! We made our way around a large sinkhole, then had to gingerly go through dense vegetation in a moist area where someone thought there was a snake. The sinkholes became bigger and more numerous, slowing down our progress.
By now, it had occurred to me that we hadn’t heard a single gun shot since we left that lone “hunter” by his car. This wild area was teeming with all sorts of birds (I even heard the call of a cuckoo bird), and I did not see a single shotgun shell on the ground. So I came up with this theory. While unregulated bird hunting kills millions of birds in Lebanon, they may never go extinct. Most Lebanese “hunters,” as I saw this day and in the past, like to drive, get out of the car, walk a few steps, and start shooting. Go on any dirt road in the mountains and look at the thousands of colorful shells lining it. The rugged, remote, roadless area we were in acts a source of birds where they procreate in peace and spread out. The more accessible areas act as a sink where birds are always being decimated. So, here was another reason not to build any more roads in Lebanon to add to the more conventional reason of preserving the landscape.
We went down to the bottom of a very wide sinkhole and explored a small cave at its lowest
point. I climbed up a very steep side and got a view to the west. As they often do in Lebanon in the summer (although it was still May), clouds were forming over the Mediterranean and moving in; from out altitude, they looked like an ice cap swallowing the lower mountains. I signaled to the rest that, though not easy, this was the way out of the sinkhole.
Down the other side, we encountered a particularly deep and rugged sinkhole. One way to the left across its side featured a treacherous gap; once crossed, one could continue up the hill. Going right way meant ending up in a different valley and a much longer way. The dog would not be able to cross the gap, so some people ended up going right. I and some of the others managed to cross the gap but, somehow, I got separated from the rest. After this last sinkhole the landscape suddenly was more conventional, made of little rolling hills. As I climbed higher, I was worried about losing my way. I topped out one last hill and was surprised to see the cedar grove of Jaj right across the valley below me. This little remnant forest clings to the top of a small ridge like a fortress, a small chapel tucked into its side; around it is mostly barren land dotted by lone cedars.
I descended down a slope of loose rocks onto a new wide trail. It was so new that two men were still working on it on the other side of the little wadi. I walked until I reached them and I asked them if they had seen anyone. They hadn’t, but here in the boondocks of Lebanon, this laborer offered me the use of his cell phone! And there was reception. I tried, but the receiving end must have been out of range. They offered me a cigarette, which, needless to say, I declined. I thanked the men and walked back on the trail all the way to the parking lot, not finding anyone. I walked back to the workers and asked them to tell the rest that I’d be waiting in the grove. I continued the remaining short distance to the grove and sat on a stone bench on the side of the ancient little chapel, which had recently been restored with the help of a Japanese non-profit. I ate some of my food.
As I began to worry, I saw the rest of the group coming down a ridge farther south than where I’d been, walking on the trail and chatting with the workers. We exchanged fiasco stories, checked out the largest tree, peeked into the chapel, and walked to the far end of a sinkhole on the edge of the grove where we sat under a large cedar and ate lunch. One of the group offered “lebneh” sandwiches; for dessert, we had molten Snickers bars. Yes, the weather was warmer than it should have been this time of the year.
At around 3, we left, taking the new trail back to the parking lot. Back in 1998, I had done a hike with Liban Trek from Ehmej to Jaj with a stop at the grove. Hiking from the grove to the village of Jaj, I had been disappointed to see that a road had been bulldozed up the mountain, scarring the landscape and intruding on this roadless area. The idea was to make the cedars more accessible, but I had a vision of uncontrolled development following the road. As far as I could tell, this had not materialized. The road had since been paved, and the parking lot was lined with newly planted cedars in protective cages just outside a tidy stone wall. The fact that getting to the grove still involved a hike likely keeps out the most of the guns-barbecue-and-loud-radios crowd. In fact, there wasn’t a shotgun shell in sight, indicating that shooting and other such activities were frowned upon in this special area.
From the parking lot, we descended down another wadi to the west. We paused at an ancient stone water reservoir built against the side of a rock face. Lower down, we passed through an
entire field of wild fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), their yellow blooms teeming with red beetles. We continued down old, uncultivated terraces, using the low walls as a giant staircase. We arrived at another wadi coming in from the left and realized we had completed a circle; the butte rock formation was just ahead.
We retraced our path down the valley and through the oak trees below it, then turned right and took a break in a derelict orchard next to the ruins of a peasant’s stone house.
As we exited the high mountains, we passed an ugly sand pit, one of the hundreds that have eaten up the country like termites. The good news was that it did not seem to have seen action for a while; it was likely one of the many shut down by the government a few years ago after a public outcry. We continued west, passing near a small old house with a huge oak tree next to it, then joined the dirt road that we had started the hike on. The forested mountains around us glowed a rich, deep green in the late afternoon sun.
We were back at the cars at around 6:10. The “hunter” was gone; he had left behind a bouquet of several dozen yellow shotgun shells under the tree.
Note: I refuse to use the word “hunter” without quotation marks when describing the chaotic situation in Lebanon. Real hunting involves: hiking distances, following regulations, hunting designated game birds during certain seasons, cleaning up after yourself, staying away from houses, and not shooting at anything just because it flies. I am sure some shotgun-bearing people in Lebanon are in top physical shape, will walk distances, and follow rules, but from the evidence left on the ground along roads, it looks like most do not – call it "drive-by hunting.”
As developers get ever greedier and move up into the “twenties” and beyond, one has to worry that a whole category
Some people will say that we should concentrate on saving neighborhoods where there are contiguous concentrations of old buildings, such as Gemmayze*, and forget about the ones scattered among the new buildings, since the setting of the latter has been destroyed anyway. I agree with the first part of the arguments, but I say that Beirut has lost so much of its heritage that we need to cling even to the leftovers. After all, they survived the war! At the very least, they maintain some variety in the streetscape. Imagine a Beirut where every luxury high-rise looks like the next one, all lurking behind walls with code-entry gates.
