12 kilometers on the Israel Trail today.  There are parts I’ve erased from my memory already.  I think I walked the whole section from the Hedera river to the Alexander river still asleep.  Actually, I was talking to friends most of the time.  But it was gorgeous.  Really.

But I woke up when we got to the beach for lunch. 

It was a perfect beach – beit yanai, maybe?  I’ll have to check with my partners.  Suddenly I saw the seagulls, each one on their own post, and I realized that we were all individuals sitting together, watching the sea and eating our sandwiches and thinking very different thoughts.

From there we went to Gan Shmuel, one of the first kibbutzim, and as we drove in, Ezi whispered to me – “My grandfather built a silo here. ”  He’d never seen it, he admitted upon grilling, but he had a picture of it, and described it.  All this was new to me – but as we stood in the middle of the kibbutz he spotted it. 

For goodness sake, I’ve been married to the guy for over 40 years and knew that Ezi had built silos in Gan Shmuel – because he was working with concrete that had to be mixed and poured continuously – so he was working around the clock, but I had no idea about this silo.

It didn’t impress our instructor, either.  He went on to show us things like the Etrog orchard and the spot where a weapons stash from the British rule here, and the graveyard, but never went near the silo.  

I came home and looked up the silo – and there was a plaque with the history of the silo, but no mention of the builder.  So now we have to find the photographs of the building of the site and send them to the historical society.  Here’s the plaque

of the link in English translation.  The Hebrew one doesn’t seem to work on this site.  No mention of Gut. But the silo is very reminiscent of Arpad Gut’s work:

and in fact, here it is – among his photographs.  His name forgotten by the preservation society.