A Digital Exploration of Mitzpe Ramon

Everything about the Mitzpe Ramon, a crater in Israel’s south, was put into perfect perspective as it rendered, somewhat inelegantly, on my screen. At first, upon my initial, vertical approach, I could decipher the Mediterranean sea and Jordan River framing the tiny country. As I zoomed closer still, the contours of the Negev desert in Israel’s south fell into sharper relief. Still, the image was too fragmented to identify the crater itself without the help of the search feature, so I transliterated Mitzpe Ramon into the search box. It appeared close to the point of observation I had found myself at.

The zoom feature then took me to the town adjacent to the crater’s edge. I could recall, vividly, the wind in my hair and the sand in my eyes as I looked out from promendate towards the endless expanse, a feeling notably, necessarily absent from its digital counterpart. The flatness of the town was a stark contrast to the three dimensions in which the crater’s edges were presented in, and I sat digitally where I had physically two years ago, looking out into the rocky expanse.

Although some of the beauty seemed lost in blurriness  I found myself suddenly liberated; I jumped from the tip of the cliff, once so limiting, and soared into the elegant rocky canvass that stretched below me. Every part of this massive crater was suddenly so accessible, every contour within reach. I spied the cars driving between the vallies, the stranger of the geological formations jutting awkwardly from the crater’s center and, as quickly as I had begun my journey  it was at an end. The detail in the rendering left much to be desired and the crater itself seemed suddenly quite small. The fact that it was so easily navigable  but without accessibility on the virtual ground level mitigated that natural gorgeousness; feeling as though you can see everything in front of you is simply tremendous. Now that I could fly there, almost touch every corner, I was somewhat less enthused.

Reading about this place is far more realistic than encountering it on Google Earth. Perhaps an issue with this particular set of photos, the fact that so much seems obscured by pixilation is antithetical to the clarity I felt upon being able to take in the entire crater from one vantage point. Descriptions of the weather and other crucial facets of Mitzpe Ramon were lacking, for obvious reasons, in Google Earth, although I think that their absence truly detracted from the experience. The sun and the shadows it cast could be replicated to some extent using the engine, but still, the render fell far short of the place’s glory, so much simpler to convey through writing. The degree to which I felt I could explore was thrilling at first, but disheartening upon learning that at least on this platform, there wasn’t much to see.