Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Dead Sea Interlude

If you ever visit the eastern part of Israel, you won't want to miss the Dead Sea. Like every other tourist you will "ooh" and "ah," and perhaps even let out a giggle or two as you float without a bit of effort in the uniquely dense waters of that vast sea.

But if you are not like every other tourist, if you are a bit more perceptive, you may notice some other things as well. You may sense the utter desolation of the place as you drive downward into that deep bowl of rock and earth. Depending on your temperament, you may feel as though you are falling downward into the bowels of the earth, or you might feel instead as though the mountains around you are growing at a terrifying rate, surrounding you utterly with a sense of your own insignificance and fragility.

You will pass by a sign that says "En Gedi," and if you were one of those children who spent many quiet Sunday mornings attending Sunday School, the name may cause you to think of David and Saul and Joshua. In the stirrings of those old memories you may find yourself wondering what could have caused those ancient warriors to battle so fiercely over this piece of barren desolation.

As you travel closer and closer to that strange, salty sea, you will begin to notice peculiar rock formations lining the road, rock formations that are not made of rock at all, but are the accumulation of centuries of salty residue, rising out of the ground in - as you may realize - oddly human-like forms. In that moment of startled recognition, you might very well think of Lot's wife, and feel a twinge of horror, and wonder...

Then, after all that, you will reach the southernmost tip of the Dead Sea - the heel of that enormous, watery footprint upon the earth. There you will find massive distilleries where modern man draws the minerals out of the sea and packages them into soaps and shampoos and beauty treatments. If you have an imaginative eye and a mind for ancient history, you might very well see the heel of the Dead Sea, not as it is now, but as it was millenniums ago - when sadistic, predatory, and violent men lived there in the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, unaware of the sulfurous doom that approached...

In all of this you will find enough to spark your sense of wonder and astonishment for weeks to come, and you might be tempted to call it a day. Don't. Along the road you have already traveled you passed by a place which, while less known, is of equal historical import. A place of great courage, and a place of great tragedy.

A place known as Masada.

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