“There Are Mountains Facing Mountains”

So goes the beginning of a song we sing occasionally in the Dar Shebab, and this past weekend I found out first hand that in the Greater Freedonia Area, this is absolutely true. Of course, having driven through here in taxis to and from the seminar site of my pre-service training and having looked out a window once or twice or just in a generally upward direction from the street, I already knew this, but there’s nothing like first-hand, on-the-ground experience to really solidify any knowledge.

At some point in the past weeks, probably in the recent nice weather we’ve had since my first few weeks here of rainy misery, the guys from the Dar Shebab decided that we should all take a hike in the mountains and have a picnic. Last Sunday that’s exactly what we did. Now, I’ve taken my fair share of hikes and prepared my fair share of picnics, so I began this hike with a pretty healthy load of confidence in my ability to do both of those things. I was going to be in for quite a surprise.

To start with, I was beginning from an initial elevation that’s just shy of Denver’s and going upwards, so we’re talking some reasonably serious mountain climbing. Second, I may have eaten some bad mutton the night before. On the other hand, perhaps I’ve just never really given the appropriate appreciation to the American forestry services that blaze and groom the many trails that lead us around our national parks. Whatever the reason, our initial ascent was a killer for me and I found myself stumbling all over the place. Then again, I’ve yet to find a single surface in the entire kingdom of Morocco that is “flat” in the sense that we Americans come to take for granted, an observation made all the more shocking on this trail littered with rocks the size of large mice that rolled around on each other like ball bearings when I realized that this was not merely a recreational mountain pass but a pedestrian artery between Freedonia and its environs traversed regularly by animals, children, and 60-year-old women with a lot more on their backs than just a camera and a bottle of water. I was even more shocked when I noticed that I seemed to be the only one of us having any sort of difficulty, but determined to carry on.

So, the general idea was to hike our way into the mountains until we came to a natural spring (of which we eventually saw several), and then cook ourselves some tagines and have a great time. For any of you who don’t know what a tagine is, it’s a type of traditional Moroccan dish defined by its being cooked in a pointy-topped ceramic pot and general deliciousness. Before we could cook anything, however, we had to build some fires, which, given the incredible windiness of the top of a mountain at this altitude, reminded me on several occasions of one of Jack London’s more well-known works, much to my exclusive pleasure. And while building the fire places that we eventually used to contain our fires, we happened upon another noteworthy discovery: scorpions. Yes, scorpions. Four of them, in fact. Little yellow ones, the smallest of which was not any bigger than a dime, though the largest was easily the size of a Hot Wheels car. If Indiana Jones is to be trusted, this should be a serious problem, but my understanding is that though you can (obviously) find scorpions in Morocco, the ones you’re likely to encounter will at worst make you sick for only a couple of days.

But this was all quickly forgotten as we got to work on the cooking and eating. It was quite exciting to be making this picnic up there, since everything was prepared on the top of the mountain. The cleaning and dicing of the vegetables, the seasoning of the meats, the brewing of the tea. This was definitely the first time I’ve ever gone hiking with a tea pot, but in Morocco very little is done without the assistance of tea. It also turned out to be the best tagine I’ve eaten in this country, as well, as apparently one of the guys had previously been a chef in the Royal Armed Forces and definitely knows what he’s doing with a chicken, some vegetables, and a pointy ceramic pot.

The tagine euphoria was quickly shattered, however, by one of the most heart-breaking aspects of Moroccan culture: the total lack of environmental consciousness. We had a beautiful picnic in pristine nature, but, as the standard operating procedure in Morocco is generally just to throw your trash more-or-less wherever you feel like, this will not be the case for the picnic that comes after us. One of the guys did gather up most of trash into bags and tied them together behind a rock, which kind of makes a difference, except for the fact that, no, it really doesn’t. Of course, you may be asking, “But Duncan, why didn’t you do something about this?” You have a good question there, and I don’t really have a good answer for you. I mostly just stared in pacifying depression. As this blog and its millions of avid reader/disciples are my witness, however, I intend to rectify my lack of action with something hopefully much more sustainable by the time I leave this country.

But before that happens, I’ll conclude for you my story of mountain adventure. It was at about the same time that I was being made an unwilling accomplice to LitterGate that I was given another surprise: the natural spring where we had just gorged ourselves like hedonistic Romans was not actually the spring of our final destination. And so we set off once more following at times donkey (excuse me) trails (it’s impolite in Moroccan culture to say “donkey” – excuse me again – without excusing yourself), and other times making our own paths through brush and scrub trees where no man was ever intended to tread. We walked through sun and rain; we saw snow on the ground and walked through intense heat. We made our way up to the top of one mountain with boulders and caves and crossed over sheer ridges. At one point we met a farmer up there and paid him off with our remaining bread to take photos with his donkeys (excuse me one final time). If I’d been walking with Halflings I’d have sworn I was in New Zealand. It’s possible that in all this time I may have breached the extent of my out-of-site policy, but as I’m not really sure where it is that I went, I suppose that no one – including myself – will never really know.

Our journey finally came to an end after we had ascended and descended four separate ridges and the sun had gone down completely enough that I was no longer the only one having difficulty with his footing and we began to discuss the various dangers posed to us in different degrees from the wild boars, lions, feral dogs, wolves, foxes, Aisha Qandisha, and our mothers if we were forced to spend the night in the mountains, but we managed to make landfall once more in Freedonia at around only 6:30 in the evening (sunsets are a lot faster the closer you get to the Equator, and there’s a lot less light pollution in Morocco than I’ve ever been used to) after around eight hours and countless kilometers (who really understands kilometers anyway?) of hiking. I can’t wait to go again.

It also got me thinking seriously about the excellence of the standard, The Ants Go Marching, but that's probably a story for another night.