What I Learned From a Wild Weekend in the North of Jordan

Wadi Rayyan, Jordan

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how travel and risk-taking go hand in hand, and how my desire for adventure speaks to something deeper in my nature—something about how I seek happiness and how I find meaning.

I’ve also been thinking about what it means to push myself out of my comfort zone, and how doing so has become a way of better understanding who I am—flaws and all.

I’ve been thinking about these things, in part, because I’ll be turning 36 in a few weeks, and as I pass the hump of my mid-30s and begin the short slide toward 40, I feel an overwhelming desire to know myself better—mostly because I want to make sure that the path I’m on is the one I really want to be on. I think it is, but I also know that most people skate through life never really thinking too hard about what they really want. They just sort of accept the expectations society has laid out for them: go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, check, check, check the boxes until you’re eventually laid to rest in one.

I’m not saying that there’s a particular age when you need to have it all figured out; if anything, I think life should be a continuous journey of adventure and self-discovery and changing your mind and changing your hair and changing your career and falling in and out of love and, most importantly, finding new challenges to take on.

I guess what I’m afraid of is getting up there in age and having regrets. I don’t think I will ever regret it if I don’t have kids, and I don’t think I’ll regret it if I never get married: I feel whole and I feel loved and I feel happy and fulfilled, and I don’t need a husband or children to feel those things.

But I do think I’ll regret never writing that novel or reading that book or visiting that country or doing that hike or watching the sunset from that vista. I do think I’ll regret it if I don’t push myself to new mental, emotional, and physical heights. I will almost certainly regret the journeys I didn’t take.

So, for my 36th birthday, at the end of this month, I’ve booked a trip to Georgia (the country, not the US state), and I’m planning to venture off on a couple of ambitious (for me, at least) solo hikes up in the Caucasus Mountains.

In preparation for this trip, I’ve been doing my best to improve my physical fitness, as I’ve gotten pretty sedentary since moving back to Jordan two years ago (I go on hikes almost every week, but they’re not especially challenging ones, and Amman isn’t a very pedestrian-friendly city, so I’m not walking nearly as much as I did in Rabat). I’ve joined a gym, which I’ve been frequenting six days a week, and I’ve been trying to push myself to do more challenging hikes.

Which brings us to this past weekend.

We had a three-day weekend here in Jordan in celebration of HRH Crown Prince Al-Hussein’s wedding, and I convinced a friend to join me in escaping the wedding craziness and booking a cabin for two nights at the Ajloun Forest Reserve.

I’ve already written about my love for Ajloun on this blog, but let me reiterate: it is my happy place. The forest reserve is a place I know (or thought I knew—spoiler alert) intimately, and the prospect of having multiple days to explore it in more detail was exhilarating.

Ajloun’s strawberry trees are especially beautiful this time of year, before their bark begins its shedding cycle

We left Amman on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at the reserve in time to check in to our cabin and do a short hike around the designated trails (which, as I’ve mentioned before, we never stay on) before settling in for the night. Our original plan was to spend Thursday exploring as much of the forest reserve as possible, but as we were hanging out in the cabin before bed, I had another idea.

I turned to my friend: “Hey… do you wanna try something kinda crazy tomorrow?”

My ‘crazy’ idea was to hike from Ajloun to Wadi Rayyan (a verdant little oasis not too far away; maybe two to three hours of hiking each way) and back. I thought it might be a good opportunity to push myself a bit more than usual: after all, the forest is familiar territory for us; this hike would take us well beyond it. My friend agreed, and the next morning, we set off at 7:30, each with three liters of water and some snacks (protein bars, a sandwich, salty snacks, and so on).

The morning view from our cabin

Oh, my friends, if we had only known how crazy our day would be. What I had originally envisioned as a six-hour excursion turned into a 12-hour adventure that pushed us to our physical and emotional limits—and one I wouldn’t trade for the world.

The first section of our hike took us all the way through the forest. Our first attempt at exiting the forest was blocked by a couple of territorial—and quite aggressive—dogs. Once it became clear that they would not be letting us pass without a fight, we doubled back and found another way out onto the street. This road led us to the village of Orjan, which was still quietly dozing as we passed through. After heading downhill through the village, we eventually turned off onto a dirt road that took us down into a wadi (valley) thick with greenery. This wadi wasn’t the easiest to traverse, and at a certain point, we had to cross over to the left side and climb up to the hill overlooking it. Passing through orchards of olive trees, we eventually came to a path that led back down to the wadi. Here, we sampled apricots straight from the trees (it’s apricot season, and they’re so fresh and delicious this time of year), then weaved back under the thick canopy.

More water began to appear at this point (most of the previous section of the wadi was dry) and we continued to weave up and down, past apricot trees, pomegranate trees, and fig trees, through thick underbrush and alongside gurgling irrigation canals. We stopped near a small stream to rest in the shade for a while before continuing onward, back up onto the street that follows just above Wadi Rayyan.

Resting near a small stream near the beginning of Wadi Rayyan

And here’s where things started to get adventurous: my friend spotted a huge cave up on the side of the steep, imposing hill that overlooks the valley. “Do you wanna go up there?” she asked. Without hesitation, I said I was in.

The climb up to that cave was no easy feat: a narrow path cut straight upward, steeply enough that I was more or less on all fours the whole time, clawing and panting until the ground leveled out right before the entrance of the cave.

The view from the cave; far down to the right, you can see the road from which we initially spotted it

Here, we decided to rest for a good while, eating a sandwich, enjoying the respite from the intense midday sun, and wasting a little time until we hoped the weather would cool off slightly. A little before 3:00 PM, we packed up our bags and continued onward: instead of going back down whence we came, we elected to climb all the way up to the road above, from which we would walk the long route back to the forest reserve, through the forest, and back to the cabins.

But we hadn’t really assessed the landscape around the cave before we climbed up, and from our current vantage point, it was nearly impossible to navigate the best route. After doing our best attempt at scouting, we chose to head to our left, along a narrow path that clung to the steep rock façade. At a certain point, we weren’t really sure if we would be led up or down, but by then, we’d stopped caring: our priority was just finding a way off this damn hill.

Eventually, the path rose upward, along a beautiful cliffside over the verdant valley below, and we were able to climb all the way up to the street above. At this point, we still had at least two hours of hiking ahead of us (or so we thought), and our water supply was running quite low. We went into conservation mode.

There are roads that can take you gently up to the very top of this valley, to that hill at the top right, but why do it the easy way when you can exhaust yourself and nearly die in the process?

We had already passed the point of exhaustion (that climb up from the valley, under the unforgiving sun, was a killer), but we trekked onward. Before entering the village of Al-Ayyoun, we stopped under the shade of an olive tree and each scarfed down a protein bar to replenish our energy.

The village of Al-Ayyoun was exceedingly charming. Children left and right came running up to chat; inside houses, we could hear televisions airing the royal wedding. The mood was vibrant, jovial, and helped lift our spirits a bit.

That mood would not last far past the outskirts of town.

After the village, we walked until we reached the end of a dead-end road, and continued through a field of olive trees until we found a spot where the fence surrounding the forest reserve had been pushed down—and we climbed over.

The north of Jordan is home to some of the oldest olive trees on Earth

But this was a part of the reserve to which we had never ventured and—with our water supplies officially spent—it became our greatest challenge of the day. We kept climbing upward, thinking that the trees would eventually open up and provide a vantage point that would help us orient ourselves. But no matter how far we climbed, we could not seem to figure out our relative location; we couldn’t see the familiar electrical poles, or familiar rocks, or the old military watchtower. And we couldn’t seem to reach the top. We would walk for 20 minutes at a time before I would check the GPS to find that, while we had gained elevation, we had barely pushed ourselves forward at all. In addition to being out of water, my phone was running out of battery, and without it, we would soon lose our map—and any connection to the outside world.

It was also getting late in the day, and time was not on our side: we needed to get back before sunset, or we’d really be fucked.

Over the course of about an hour, I went through a wide range of emotions: frustration, exhaustion, hopelessness, fury (I got a rush of adrenaline at a certain point from this feeling of absolute rage I felt, directed at this stupid fucking forest and its stupid fucking trees and its endless hills)… you name it. At the bleakest moment of our journey, we sat down to rest. I felt pure despair. I wanted to give up.

And then it started to rain.

It wasn’t raining hard—just some light drops—but it was as if the sky were opening up to tell me to calm down, you idiot. Use your brain.

It worked. We continued onward, and the hill we were on soon merged with the one next to it, creating a cool, shaded valley that led us up to the end of the forest, out through a small orchard of olive trees, and onto a road, which, after another half hour’s amble, took as back to the entrance of the reserve.

We made it back shortly after 7:00 PM—nearly 12 hours after we had first set out.

Look, a 25-kilometer hike isn’t a huge distance under normal circumstances: but this was anything but normal. For much of the hike, we weren’t anywhere near established trails or roads—we were just barreling through dense forests and thickly packed valleys and tall grasses, ducking under tree limbs and shoving through bushes and pulling aside thorny vines and brushing spiderwebs out of our faces. And most of it was uphill: not steadily sloping inclines, but exhausting, vertiginous climbs.

It was one of the most physically challenging things I’ve ever done. And I would do it again in a heartbeat—not least of all because it taught me a lot about myself: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And that’s really the point of all of this, isn’t it? The point of travel, the point of adventure, the point of pushing ourselves beyond our limits: it shows you who you are.

This weekend, I learned that, in times of crisis or struggle, when I’m pushed to extremes, I go into a kind of panic-mode autopilot: I keep moving, persisting stubbornly onward, refusing to stop and rest and assess—even if it’s counterproductive. Instead of looking for a path and studying my surroundings, I just barrel onward, expending unnecessary energy because I want the straightest path forward.

But the straightest, most direct path is not always the quickest or the smartest way to go.

Sometimes the long way around is easier—a smoother trail, a better outcome, and a more scenic view.

I’ll never tire of these views

There is something rather dreary about cutting a straight, simple path from Point A to Point B, from year to year, from milestone to milestone, from birth to death. Life is best lived when it includes wild detours.

Have you ever heard of DRD4-7R?

It’s a gene variant that affects the body’s dopamine receptors, and is estimated to be found in about 20 percent of the world’s population.

Those who possess the 7R allele are more likely to engage in risky behaviors—because it takes a little more excitement and adrenaline to trigger those dopamine receptors. It’s also quite commonly associated with adventurous travelers.

While I can’t say for certain, I’d guess that it’s quite likely I carry this gene variant. (Have you read my post about the Thakhek Loop in Laos? That alone should be confirmation enough.) I will never be content to lie on a beach for a week. I will never be happy if I’m sticking to well-worn paths. I will never—never—engage in “organized fun” (cruises, guided tours, et cetera). I need more.

So as I prepare to turn the corner into my 36th year, let it be known: I’m here for the adventures, for as long as my feet will carry me. I’m prepared for a lifetime of crazy detours. Forget Point A to Point B: at the end of the day, we all end up in the same place. I want to cut winding, weaving, forking, rugged, wild paths the entire way.

My beloved Ajloun