The Meshushim Reserve is part of the Yehudiya Forest Nature Reserve, located in the central Golan Heights. The short Lookout Trail leading from the parking lot to the Meshushim Pool is at its most spectacular in the spring, when it reveals the wide-open, flat, green spaces of the Yehudiya Forest with its Mount Tabor oaks. This forest-park landscape is typical of the central Golan Heights.
As you walk along the trail, you will notice a hill to the southeast. This is the Nesharim (vulture) Dome. The largest population of Griffon's vultures in the country lives nearby. North of the dome are the Yehudiya and Zavitan streams, which tend toward the Beteikha Valley and the Sea of Galilee. The streams are secondary rifts stemming from the north-south Syrian-African Rift (the huge valley in which the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee both lie).
On the trail down to the stream in the springtime, you will see many kinds of herbaceous flora with yellow blooms, as well as pink cyclamens and red anemones. Visitors sometimes spy wild boars on the way, rooting around in the moist soil near the bases of the oak trees for seeds and acorns. Wild boars, which are very common in the vicinity, like to keep their distance from humans as they seek food and raise their young, and so they limit their presence around the trails mainly to nights and early mornings.
Going down the cliff on the marked trail and crossing the jeep track, you will hear the roar of the water before you see it. You will reach a wooden bridge from which you can see the water frothing through the narrow canyon below. The bridge leads to the Yehudiya Forest and the Zavitan Stream along a trail recommended for experienced hikers only, and only in the morning. Others will continue a few more meters to the stepped descent to the Meshushim Pool.
Meshushim means hexagons; the pool is named after the shape of the basalt pillars that make up its walls. This impressive scenery is created by the cooling of layers of lava floes, undisturbed and slowly, over a long period. The molecules of the fiery liquid are round, and when they cool into a solid, they "prefer" a polygonal shape that it closest to their round shape and results in minimum energy loss. Another kind of crystal formed over a long period in the earth also has a polygonal shape - the diamond.
How to get there?
The entrance to the reserve is from road 888 along an unpaved road north of the community of Had-Nes.
Credit: Israel Nature and Parks Authority.