Plateau

Often in the late afternoon or, on days when I don’t teach, in the morning just after sunrise, I walk to the plateau east of the village. The road is rocky and dusty for the first 100 meters, and then the path splits from the road and traverses the dried pasture above the last of the houses and walled gardens. Multiple trails lead to the top, each with its own collection of dried straw, rocks, dried manure, burnt grass, and grasshoppers. After gaining the enough elevation that the ground no longer slopes away out of sight above me (which would indicate the top is approaching), I pick a path that winds south out of the bushes. Here the path is rockier, and my shoes press the round stones together, each footstep sounding like a tiny dump truck emptying a tiny load of gravel onto the pavement in the midst of the otherwise tranquil air. It is too hot up here for people and livestock, the road too bumpy for motorcycles, and the time of day wrong for insects. The only other sound is the singular, unexpected, and inevitable whoosh of a pair of ground-birds suddenly taking flight with all their might, after waiting for me to come as close as possible.

The path emerges from the bushes into what was a meadow three months ago. Now, the entire low wide hilltop is martian; brushfires set in November have razed everything except the skeletons of a few small trees. The ground is black and red with ash and loose round rocks.

It seems odd to feel like an explorer. My small backpack contains a pocket knife, nail trimmers, an issue of The New York Review of Books, a copy of Wuthering Heights, a pen, two mandarin oranges, my cellphone [powered on, there is service up here], and 10000 Guinean Francs [one bill, the largest]. With this kit, my sandals, shorts and white tshirt, I could stay out here for hours! At least until I get thirsty. Or it gets dark.

Have the other people that traversed this Marscape earlier today, or last year, or three hundred years ago also wondered how all the small round rocks got to be scattered about on top of a high flat plateau?  Did they stop and sit on this rock, right here, which seems smoother, shinier, more comfortable than its neighbors, and read, write, pray, or ponder? Did they get sunburnt? Or am I the first?

At about 1600 the moon is higher in the sky than the sun. Unlike earlier, the breeze that occasionally blows is slightly cooler than the stationary air it displaces. I sit on a pile of gravel that someone has made, and burrow my heels into the loose side. I read about Heathcliff and Jonathan Raban. I eat a mandarin and spit out the seeds with skill but not relish. Maybe I receive a text message. Earlier this week I was also here, although sitting somewhere else, and reading Plato’s account of the death of Socrates, 2413 years ago. I can’t decide which seemed less real.