Beit Keshet Oak Forest Reserve and Lookout
"Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and said (to Saul).… and thou shalt come to the plain of Tabor, and there shall meet thee three men going up to God…" Samuel 10: 1,3.Covering 25,000 hectares (some 6,000 acres), the reserve protects one of the last remaining habitats of the Mt. Tabor Oak, a species that once covered vast areas of the north and coastal plain. The oak and terebinth trees were sites for water rituals in ancient times. Most of the few ancient oak groves were clear-cut during the late 19th-century by the Ottoman authorities for use as railway ties. Clearings between the trees annually fill with spring wildflowers, including red anemones and delicate pink
cyclamens. The forest also has pine trees that were first planted during the reforestation program in 1926. In the spirit of prophecy, "….like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled - The holy seed is its stump." Isaiah 6:13. |