Berber Mayses

Step. Step. Onto the rock. Careful, don't skid off. Step. Step. How hot is it today? Not a cloud in the entire sky. Step. Step. Move closer as you pass the juniper tree. Catch its shade for a minute. But only a minute. Step. Step. Avoid the donkey shit. Cast a sideways glance. That blue sky does sit nicely above that barren ridge. So brown and rocky up there. So different lower down. The snow melt off the Toubkal range sets off a dozen little streams. Waterfalls and rocky spillways merge into green valleys. But that water seems so far away from here. Step. Step. The pass can't be much further on. Damn! I turned my gaze to the side and went right into the fresh donkey shit. Gotta watch my feet. No! I didn't come here to watch my feet - I came to see the Berber villages cascading down the hillsides in flat roofed stone rectangles. I came to see the irrigation channels that run from those streams to the terraced plantings that sustain the villages. The groves of recently planted walnut trees. The women gathering grasses at the valley bottoms and then carrying the heavy sacks of stalks back up the trails to spread them on the flat roofed houses to dry as preparation for winter feed for the goats and donkeys. Look at them coming back up the rocky trails. And me - with just a simple daypack - why am I suffering so much? Step. Step. 
 
Oh no. Here comes another donkey downhill toward me. Massive carrying racks on its back, bulging with food supplies or construction materials, it takes up the entire path and expects me to move. And I will! I think I can get up this ridge to the side while it brushes past me. Hold my balance. Our guide calls out to the muleteer and they exchange some joke in Berber. The mule halts. I'm standing still on the small ridge, holding my balance. But I'm also catching my breath. We're around 2200 meters right now and the air feels thin. The pass will be about 2450 meters. That's a lot of steps upwards.  And I'm panting harder than I had expected.
 
Time to contemplate mules. This one looks pretty healthy. Actually, they all have looked pretty healthy. A mule is a major family asset here and you take care of it.  It's how you get the cement bags in. It's how you get the walnut harvest out. It's how you pick up good money transporting food and backpacks for the tourists. Like this one, panting at the side of a rocky path, glad that Hassan and the mule are carrying all his stuff on to the next town. I've grown rather fond of our mule, and when we come to an area where the muleteers have let the animals wander into the hills to graze, I can recognize my mule at a distance from all the others. And those cascading box houses of the Berbers - the bottom floor is for the mules. And the goats too, if they aren't too many. Not in summer, of course, when the animals are tethered or penned in the open. But in winter, when the snow socks in these mountain valleys, not only do the animals need their food and shelter in proximity to the human families, but their escaped body heat provides heating to the humans in the level above. Early technology in-floor radiant heating.
 
Winter?! I can't imagine this place like that. Probably 35 Celsius right now. Step. Step. I'm dry and the perpetual dust in the air makes my throat worse. Get out the water bottle - but keep going as you do. Maintain a rhythm. Swing the back pack off your shoulder, avoiding the rock that rolls out from under your heel, takes some swigs from the bottle, imagine drinking from the cool rushing stream below, swing the bags back on your shoulder, gaze toward the pass that keeps receding. And step. And step. And step.
 
How old is this trail I'm on? It's just a rutted mule track, but it must be over a thousand years old. Over two thousand.  How long have the Berber people been in these hills? Certainly before the Arabs arrived. Certainly before the Romans spread their empire to this end of the Mediterranean. After all, their name for themselves is Amazigh, "Berber" being a corruption of the Roman epithet "barbaroi". Generations of slow development of these villages. You can see it in the terracing of the hills. Dry, rocky hills which, in the valley bottoms with mountain runoff streams, give way to a few square meters here and a few square meters there of productive crop land. Vegetables. Wheat. And planted below and around are the trees - apple, walnut, olive. The key to all this is the centuries-old irrigation systems diverting the mountain streams to water the higher slopes. We walk over these channels. Step. Step. And in the welcome shade of the aged trees that line the channels. That's where village children play in the dirt. And donkeys are put to graze. Watch your step. Watch your step. Below, where the water is most plentiful and the grasses grow highest - that's where the women go with hand scythes to cut the grasses, load them in heavy bundles on their backs, and then bring them up to dry for winter. I see the men above them, hacking away at the hillside to increase the terraced land or working the land itself, planting. Not much has changed here in generations, except that new funds have meant new infrastructure and the old dug reservoirs and channels are being replaced by concrete structures that can carry more water to more places.  Water, people, donkeys, crops - an intertwined ecosystem unfolds before me. Something to think about as my eye leaves the hillsides and moves again to my feet. Step. And step.
 
Yesterday we picked our way through a very old village. Modern structures are built with precast cement cinder blocks and some iron rod inner structure. But this village was built the old way - houses of many-sized stones, windows and door lintels made out of wood from local trees, mud coating everything. We climbed the stepped pathways of the village, under archways and tunnels resulting from generations of organic home additions, when our guide asked if we'd like to be invited inside a house for tea. Of course! (not that we've been lacking tea since arriving in Morocco!). A few words with a local lady and we were sitting in a room on cushions, crude paintings on the walls, a pile of blankets in the corner, and a view through the latticed window of the valley below. And shortly after, the high teapot and the skinny glasses and the Berber tea ( a mix of ginseng, mint, rose petals and varying other surprises) being poured from proper height so that the tea is not only tasted and smelled but heard also. General chatter in the local tongue and it unfolds that this woman is a distant relative of our guide. That turned out to be lucky for us because, unknown to us, our guide had enquired as to whether there was any corn flour to be had in the village (Avril is celiac, so she cannot eat the ubiquitous bread or couscous, and our trekking company had promised to find her food she could eat in these remote parts). Because he was a relative, the woman and her husband decided to part with the last of their home-grown, home-ground corn! (Naturally we left behind a sizeable cash thank-you for the tea) Then we got to see the wool spindles and the handmade snow shovel and other household supplies lodged in the house rafters.
 
That night we had delicious corn-flour soup prepared by Hassan! Have I not mentioned Hassan? He's our combined cook and muleteer. Each day a fabulous lunch appears in the middle of nowhere as Avril and I sprawl out in, say, the dappled shade of a walnut grove. And each evening, installed in another shelter or hostel, he produces yet another fabulous tagine. Hassan must be up ahead of us someplace, maybe getting lunch ready. Our mule, loaded with food supplies and all our bags, passed us an hour ago. Step. Step. And what have I done in that hour but wonder at what I've seen, wonder about what lies ahead, and feel sorry for myself because I have to walk. After all, normal people my age take holidays by going to a beach resort in Cancun!
 
Step. And step. The pass has got to be getting nearer but it doesn't seem that way. Avril suggests they should post the reverse of the car mirror warning: "objects on the horizon are further than they appear." Oh, damn!  The trail just began to drop. Steeply.  Now we lose some of the hard-gained altitude and instead deal with jolts to the knees. Ouch! Each dropped step is another painful lurch. Hold to the rocky sides in this chute - that will help with stability. Oh, damn! Two fully laden donkeys coming up at me. Arghh!!!