Salat

I start walking up the valley, towards the high Atlas. One high peaks dominates the sky at the end of the valley.

I have rarely been so unprepared in my life, but this is mostly intentional.

I've chosen a tiny road I saw on google maps, extending back into the mountains from Amizmiz, dotted with Berber villages. My bag has some bread and water and two meager, short blankets.

I hike for miles, above green terraced farmland cut into the steep valley walls, every step a move towards a completely unknown destination. There certainly isn't a hostel down here. Piles of rock houses sit in a rhythm along the road, sheep and goats scattered across the hills, and a vibrant quietness I haven't heard since the silence of Connemara, Ireland. This valley is unbelievably beautiful -- bus tours would cart folks in from all over the world if they knew.

Old men kiss their hands before they shake mine. Children look in shock, run to gather friends, and peer out of windows and doorways with practiced calls of "Bonjour!" A teenage boy gets my american phone number after i buy a candy bar in the tiny store he works at. Conversations stop in the streets as I amble past, and I feel the eyes on me wherever I go. I don't speak any English nor see a white person for four days.

Where am I going? I guess it's the end of the road. I just want to see it. Where will I sleep? People motion me further along the path, someone speaks of a hotel. It turns out to be something more of a home-stay -- but my adopted family invite me to tea and meals, and rural life moves in it's slow rhythms.

This is one of the greatest adventures of my life.

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I am panting. Hard. The valley floor of yesterday looks thousands of feet below me. Kick-step. Breath. Kick-step. Breath. Is this seriously altitude? How the heck am I here at all?

I am trying so hard. Was not expecting this. Hardly even considered even trying to climb this thing until last night, really. This is harder than Mt Adams. Ballpark of Whitney. The eagerness of the chossy start gave way long ago to the calculated, pained, snowy endurance. Kick-step. Breath. Kick-step. Breath. This work magically lessens the divide between you and yourself.

I look up. The sun is too low. You idiot. It's late. I push harder through a section of ice and rock and gain the summit ridge, into easier snow, and now I am on the summit, the usual shock that it's somehow over after hours and hours of labor. There's no more "up", so I stare sideways in all directions over the high Atlas mountains.

Perhaps no one has been up here before. I feel remote, I feel first in the unknown. I can't imagine that's true, but I name it anyways. Salat Peak. It's Arabic for prayer. I see my effort as a kind of prayer, something quite personal as the whole valley Berber crowd regards my reported act with a general apathy.

I pray to have the wisdom to love myself, and the patience to love others.

 I am normally conceited to the point of requiring something I'd think a little more complex, something more elegant and high-minded to justify my attention -- but this is what comes out of me thousands of feet above the valley, staring into myself amidst all the straining effort.

On the way down I experience the most perfect silence as my body relaxes, and the light turns gold on the opposite ridge. I feel like I should be able to fly down to Fatima and the family in that tiny village at the bottom. Breath. My mind clears for once.

Salat.