Ehud Trail in Haifa - a community trail

Shil Ehud in the Ahuza neighborhood in Haifa is a neighborhood meeting place for the residents of the street who maintain and clean it and is one of the many types of trails that go out from all the neighborhoods on the Carmel Ridge. The tour to the Ehud Trail was led by Audrey Langer, a trail guide, and she also writes about it in this column.

The tour to Shibil Ehud is part of a community project led by the 'For Haifa' group for the fourth year, this time in the shadow of the war and to strengthen community resilience.

British Forest Reserve

"We Haifa people are lucky to have the Haifa wadis, which were defined as forest reserves back in the time of the British. Most of the mountain neighborhoods sit on the backs of the spurs and below a green lung/wadi.
But as soon as Shoadi is neglected as a result of sewage flow, dumping of waste, untreated vegetation, it becomes tangled and impassable and our ability to look after it, to keep an eye on it diminishes like the proverb "far from the eye is far from the heart".

The corona has brought people closer to nature

In Corona, during the lockdown and the distance restriction, people began to rediscover the green areas around the house, when the Haifa valleys were suddenly rejuvenated. Residents suffocated in their homes, asked to go out to freshen up and began to go down to the valleys and discover green places to expand their hearts.

Sometimes the private madness of individuals and sometimes with the help of the harnessing of the community, some of the wadis began to cultivate paths, pruning and signage and basically recognizing these assets of urban nature trails that allow spontaneity to walk even after a day's work because it is close to home and does not require a trip.

Shivil Ehud

This is what happened with Nahal Ehud, which flows between Yochaved and Ehud streets in Haifa. The path was marked seven years ago by the 'Green at Heart' association, but over the years it was neglected and after the corona virus it was maintained by the residents of the street. In order to distinguish the path, we hung signs with proverbs and information.

To maintain the path it is necessary to keep walking on it. For this purpose, the community was invited to events in the river and the trail was assigned for training as part of the Haifa Wadi events, an initiative of Inbal Chen Bergev who founded the group 'For Haifa' on Facebook. The group publishes all the walking routes in the Haifa wadis and their branches and in addition offers tours in the wadis and trails on the weekends for the benefit of residents who want to get to know urban nature trails on foot.

The group's activists even made efforts to integrate the path into the trip program of nearby schools - Urban H and Ehud High School, with the idea that the young travelers will get to know the green properties near their home and will often visit them with family members.

How to get there?

The path starts at Ehud Street 44 and goes down the stairs to a magical Zola in the shade of the mulberry tree with a wide view, a wonderful place to gather. On the way down you can see how, following the laying of a new sewer pipe for the benefit of TAMA projects, the vegetation is shaved and how this affects soil erosion...

In Zola you can rest, there are benches and a swing, and the place is maintained by Oded Ullman, an energetic pensioner who converted the morning walk on the street in favor of the maintenance of the path, and further along the path splits into several options. The middle path, the channel path, allows you to go down to Operation Yonatan Street. The southern path, the flowering path, allows you to enjoy wonderful spring blossoms, as currently among the variety of shows you will find blue derricks, hairy lotem bushes, tall garlic, common pistachio and the blood of the Maccabees.

It is recommended to go down the channel path and return with the flowering path to the same split and from there go up towards Shaar HaGai Street 1 through the northern bank a few meters from the starting point.
The duration of the visit is about an hour and a half.