It’s a strange and thrilling moment. “Hold on tight and, if you’re nervous, don’t look down,” my guide tells me as I settle into the harness and prepare to drop. We’ve reached the edge of this cliff on mountain bikes, spotting Nubian ibex and other curious desert creatures as we rolled through the Negev, a wilderness of biblical proportions. Now, teetering on the edge of the world’s largest erosion cirque, more than 1,600 feet deep at its bottom, I have a few second thoughts. But I won’t have long to think it through. “Ready?” he asks. And I am. A moment later, I’m rappelling into a crater so big and wide, it swallows me whole. I’m in Israel, a tiny nation with a long, storied history and more wild country than you can imagine. Roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, Israel has shorelines on three seas (Dead, Med, and …
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