Sally Kaplan, a long-time Ramah Darom camper, wrote this essay about a powerful experience she had while on Seminar 2008. She will be a staff member at Darom in 2009.

With every rocky step we took, the sun beat less and less miserably against our backpack laden teenage shoulders. The mountains grew against the sinking ball of light, and darkness blanketed every inch of the cooling desert floor. Each movement was a cautious inching of our feet in the direction of a small flashlight. This tiny light directed over one hundred teens on a silent night hike in the Negev desert of Israel. Around this harsh stepping, rock crunching line of whispering kids were the vast, white desert mountains. The topography was rough and rocky, yet every mile around was pure and white, powdery like a fresh layer of snow. There came a place where our tour guide stopped us all; a valley between two snowy mountains of cool dust and ancient rock. Our instructions were to find a space of our own, away from others. Shh, no talking.

The rustling and rattling as everyone removed their backpacks and sat down was the loudest it would be all night.

I scoured the area for a plot of clear ground. I stepped over a small ridge littered with rocks and left my footprints in the white dust. Against the small mountain wall I claimed my space. I touched the wall, ran my fingers down as I felt each tiny groove and grain. It felt cold against my hands. I dug my fingernail into the white mass and felt the cool moldable centimeter of mountain crumble press further in between my flesh and my nail. It felt just like dried pottery clay. I removed my nail from the ancient molding clay. I slipped my backpack off and set it angled against the vertical slice of cold, soft desert rock, just where it curved into what became that ground. I sat myself down and leaned back, adding to the unavoidable noise of everyone’s bodily adjustments. My abdomen tightened as I leaned back to rest my head onto my makeshift pillow. We had three minutes. Three minutes of silence to think, hear, touch, smell, see, taste and feel whatever we could. The air was cool and the silence began. Just three minutes.

I closed my eyes and breathed that dry, cool, musty air in. I felt the snow white dust molecules tickling my nose as they journeyed into my lungs. I tasted the cold lingering powder as I inhaled. The mountains were now a part of me. Across the desert, in the valleys, around the mountains, there was a piercing silence. It was deafening; the type of silence one would believe existed only in outer space. I opened my eyes to see the twilit sky and the stillness of life and death around me. Finally, I could relate the discoveries of my ears to what could be seen. There was a deep intensity in the silence and complete lack of motion. My ears felt like a vacuum, my heartbeat felt like the strongest movement for miles around. I was in a new universe.

The three minutes were passing slowly, but much too fast all in the same. I felt the coolness from hard earth underneath my body seep through my clothing. My mind diverted to a childhood scene of lying in the grass on a cold dewy morning, feeling the small beads of water travel through the fibers of my t-shirt and onto my skin. I felt each small divot and bump in the texture of the ground against my back. It did not cradle my body. They fought for comfort; the desert floor and the curves of my anatomy, but the ground won. I continued to stare into the endless sky above. It was dim, not quite having reached darkness.

My breaths had never been so pure, so clean and deep. I was at home in my newfound universe; at home in the still of silence. My hand slid down to my side as slowly and quietly as possible. I rested it on the dried white clay ground and discovered a patch of powder. My thumb and first two fingers pinched together, compressing a pancake of dust between them. I let it fall slowly back to the ground as I rubbed my digits against each other rhythmically. My fingers were left with a silky soft layer of white, much like the remnants of drawing chalk from a blackboard. I could taste the chalky powder rising with the wind, a bit like the accidental case of an open mouth around cloudy dust of two erasers clapping together.

The silence grew with darkness. I could lie there all night, at home in this ancient land. My resting heart rate slowed with every moment. I could feel the strong pumping of blood through my body as if my heart was the only thing sustaining the entire desert. The world around was so motionless and quiet that I could hear my heartbeat like the throb of a blaring bass speaker. I turned my head slightly to one side and the other, and stared at the soft rock where the mountain met the ground. My right arm remained rested upon the ground as my left was folded over my stomach. My fingers continued to meddle with the clay dust on the ground, blanketing each inch of my hand with the fine, smooth, ancient remnants of a million steps upon that particular plot of earth.

I wondered how much time had passed. Everyone around me had remained completely silent, much to my surprise. No rustling of backpacks or giggles reflecting an inability to appreciate such freedom from the world. I was dreading the moment when the silence would be broken; cut open with a dull blade.

Okay everyone, three minutes is up. Let’s keep walking. And the incision was made.

It all ended so suddenly. My heartbeat hastened as I took one last breath before rising to my feet. The space around me was so precious. It was pure and white, cool in the darkness of night. The musty scent of ancient clay, the grainy taste of airlifted powder; I had taken in every moment. Though the silence was too short, it was the first time in my life that I truly felt I hadn’t taken a single second for granted. The whole desert was part of me; in my lungs and my mouth, on my hands and in my heart, and as I stood up to gather my thoughts, I realized that I was a part of it, too.