The desert - some thoughts

This is another train of thoughts post inspired by the deserts we've seen....

Desert

After a few days of driving through Morocco I needed to look up a definition of desert to relate it to the diversity of what I was seeing.  Although I knew we had deserts in Australia and they were not the sand dune kind I'd always thought of deserts as sand dunes. But they are obviously not. The definition I saw said deserts were a desolate area of land with little or no vegetation, (typically covered in sand). And deserts in Morocco are nothing if not desolate but they are infinitely diverse. They are not just sand covered areas, (and sand is diverse enough) but dry land strewn with small rocks, large rocks, rocky land, hilly, anything but sandy, but always dusty, dry, harsh, gritty and practically barren.

Oasis

Yet by contrast I am astounded by oases..... They are not the little circle of palm trees and a well as I had always thought but instead they can be a river valley or spring or gorge with houses built up the sides of the rock. And the vegetation in these areas is lush and incredibly diverse. Many types of trees (both productive and not) grow, thousands in some places. Oases can support thousands of people.

Dades, an oasis

In the most productive of oases, water is channelled through aqua ducts and families irrigate their land on a regular basis. Water use is regulated and families get the water for a certain amount of time, on certain days. We saw fields being irrigated with those next door drying off and yet others having not yet received their allocation for the day. These fields contained things like dates, wheat, beans, figs, oranges, potatoes and fodder for animals etc. There is also abundant non plant life, the oasis is full of trilling frogs, chirping birds, cats, donkeys, goats and sheep to name a few. Oases are so amazingly fertile, such a profound contrast to the desert which is right next door.

Weather in the desert

Apparently, like there are many words for sand in the desert, there appear to be many words for the weather in the desert. They are somewhat lost in translation though. Ismail told us about wind v windy weather. We have experienced wind but not windy weather. Wind is where there is wind whipping up the sand but you can still see some distance away and need a scarf only sometimes to protect your face. Windy, however is where you can't see more than a few centimetres in front of you and you need to constantly cover your face with a scarf. I'm glad we did not see this kind of weather. The wind kicked up enough dust to cause a haze for a few days.

Are Peru and Morocco related?

Given our experience of the success of the Inca people in the altitude and now the Moroccan people in the desert, it brings home to me just how adaptable humans are. I have obviously read about it and benefited from it but never really understood it till now. To actually witness how the Incas manipulated plants to produce at higher and higher altitudes by planting them over successive seasons on graded steps in the hillside, then how Moroccans use water to make the desert come alive and witness the ancient Roman's success which was in part due to their system of aqua ducts, is enlightening.

It all comes down to humans ability to harness water which then allows us to settle in one place.

I now better understand the need for humans to work together beyond the family group to survive. I have been pondering on Yuval Noah Harari's theory that the unique capacity for humans to work together with other, unrelated people, comes from our unique ability to create narratives and use imagination. Of course the environments we have witnessed on our travels have not crystallised this theory for me yet but they certainly make me consider the importance to survival of working together to harness water.