physical geography corner

Although I was in Morocco, I was there in February and this provided me with realities I might not have expected.

The weather, for instance, was generally cool. The sun made things hot during the day, but even then if you paid attention a winter chill lay beneath, heightened whenever a cloud got in the way. The Atlantic coast had sea breezes and mist making things a bit colder still while the mountains were mountains, although even up there the sun did a bang up job of warming the day when one was out of the breeze.

Nights were cool to cold no matter where I was. Buildings constructed of stone and designed to minimize heat accentuated this and encouraged a dampness to emerge in most of the rooms I slept in. Not the most pleasant but not a great disaster. Blankets were available and I had my sleeping bag as well.

The landscape I found shockingly green and verdant. Admittedly I never went south past Marrakech or east over the mountains, both routes leading to the Sahara, which I understand has a reputation for being dry and beige. But the parts I did see were in spring bloom (I was told I arrived in Marrakech after a week of rains) and it was very nice. The green was that rich new growth that springs forth suddenly and uniformly from worked fields, rather than the patchy green that struggles from beneath a previous year’s dead browns when fallow land is awakening in the spring. On the train ride north from Marrakech there were also wonderful carpets of tiny purple and orange flowers.

I had always pictured a bit more of a brown deserty place, but Morocco is actually quite fertile. Something I should have guessed giving all those ‘maroc’ marked tangerines one sees on the shelves in Canadian grocery stores, the country’s reputation for wood products, and all the olive oil the Romans managed to milk from the place.