Spring Somewhere Else

Last year, a little earlier than this time, we followed a 24-year old man named Mohammed into an orchard in Morocco just this side of the Dades Gorge, into a village orchard where no one bothered us and we had a picnic with him. We stopped at a village market, shown below, at a baker for bread, at an olive seller for olives, at a fresh cheese seller for cheese. He guided us into the orchard actually and we talked about his life mostly and he asked us some questions about ours. He had a sweet disposition and wore a winter jacket even though the sun was hot that day. 

 I remember he told us his grandmother had died the week before who he said he loved very much. But he was smiling and cheerful and when he said "this is life". I wondered about cultures with built-in systems for the acceptance of death and loss and about my own mechanisms to deal, which don't seem that well-equipped. He seemed remarkably well-equipped.

The morning market where Spring was apparent in baby dogs and baby goats and camels, and abundant vegetables and fruits: peas ("from Agadir" he explained), oranges ("from Agadir"), olive saplings ("from Agadir"). The best gets trucked in from Agadir.

 In the evening, we sat on our guesthouse roof and I thought, how is it we got so lucky and so unlucky at the same time to have so many choices, to have so much, to be so far away from our origins? I fell in love extra-strong that night with possibility, and every day a little more after that, with gratitude for the simplest of what is taken with you, from far away from home, from anywhere in this world. My navigation through the abstract country of figuring out what there is to give, why does that seem so difficult to figure out, what is it and is it enough?