Morocco's Green Highlands

Welcome to Morocco.

Upon arrival at Casablanca Airport, you will be met by your guide and begin the journey north along the Atlantic coast toward Rabat, Morocco's capital.

Today is deliberately gentle.

After your international journey, there is no need to rush immediately from monument to monument. We settle into our hotel and, depending on arrival time, take an easy introduction to Rabat.

Rabat is a fitting place to begin. It is a city where different chapters of Morocco sit comfortably beside one another—old walls and gardens, the Kasbah of the Oudayas, the historic Chellah, and the modern capital that has grown around them.

But our journey is not primarily about cities.

Tomorrow we turn inland.

Beyond Rabat lies another Morocco: hills covered with olive and fig trees, small farming communities, sacred towns, forests, mountain paths and eventually the high cedar country.

For the next several days, we will travel through these changing landscapes slowly, sometimes by vehicle and often on foot, allowing the vegetation, altitude and people who live here to help us understand where we are.

Tonight, we simply arrive, meet our fellow travelers and prepare for the journey ahead.

Tomorrow, we leave the Atlantic plain and enter the green hills of the north.

The olive trees will be waiting.

After breakfast, we leave Rabat and turn inland toward the green hills of northern Morocco.

The landscape changes gradually.

The broad Atlantic plains begin to fold into hills, cultivated fields become smaller, and villages appear among orchards and groves. As we travel toward Ourzagh and Ouazzane, one tree becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.

The olive.

Some trees are young and carefully tended. Others seem almost as though they have always belonged to the hillside. Around them are farms, paths, villages and generations of human work.

This is the country of the Jbala—the mountain people of northern Morocco.

Here, agriculture has long adapted itself to the contours of the land. Olive and fig trees grow on hillsides where large-scale farming would be difficult, while cereals, vegetables, livestock and seasonal crops contribute to a rural economy shaped by the mountain environment.

We stop along the way and begin exploring on foot.

Walking changes our relationship with the landscape. What appeared through the vehicle window as a green hillside becomes a collection of small fields, stone boundaries, footpaths, trees and houses. We begin noticing how people have made productive use of slopes without erasing their natural form.

Eventually, we reach Ouazzane, surrounded by its famous olive country.

But Ouazzane nourished more than the body.

The town also became an important spiritual center, associated for centuries with Sufi traditions, pilgrimage and religious learning. Its zawiyas drew people from surrounding mountain communities and from much farther away, giving this relatively small town an influence far beyond its geographical size.

Here, the olive and the zawiya belong to the same human landscape.

One nourished households and livelihoods.

The other offered a place for gathering, teaching, remembrance and spiritual nourishment.

We spend time discovering Ouazzane and the surrounding countryside before settling in for the evening.

Yesterday, the olive trees were waiting for us.

Today, we have entered their country.

And as we will discover throughout this journey, trees are never simply part of the scenery.

They tell us something about the land.

And something about the people who learned to live with it.

This morning we leave Ouazzane and continue deeper into the mountains.

The cultivated olive country remains with us for a while, but as we climb, the landscape begins to change. Villages become more scattered, valleys deepen, and larger stretches of forest appear between the cultivated slopes.

We are entering another layer of Morocco's Green Highlands.

Today much of our journey is on foot, following mountain paths through the Amergou and Tamesnit country toward Lalla Outka. These are landscapes best understood slowly. A road tells us where a village is. A footpath begins to tell us why it is there.

We pass cultivated plots, grazing land and forest, encountering small communities whose lives have long depended upon a combination of agriculture, livestock and what the surrounding mountains provide.

As altitude changes, so does vegetation.

The olive trees that dominated yesterday's hillsides gradually share the landscape with the trees and plants of higher country. The transition is not marked by a sign. We notice it beneath our feet and above our heads.

The mountain is telling us that we have climbed.

But these highlands have been shaped by more than ecology.

Along our route lies the isolated shrine of Moulay Bouchta al-Khammar, a figure associated in local tradition with music and spiritual blessing. Musicians have come here seeking baraka—blessing, inspiration, perhaps that mysterious gift that allows sound to become something more than sound.

We approach such a place as guests.

A zawiya or shrine in the mountains is not simply another monument to visit. It belongs to a geography of memory and devotion—a network of sacred places that helped connect otherwise scattered rural communities through pilgrimage, gathering, hospitality and shared belief.

For a traveler, the shrine may seem remote.

For those who know these mountains, it has long been a destination.

We continue through the high country toward Lalla Outka, stopping when the landscape invites us to rest and allowing time for encounters along the way.

By late afternoon, we reach our camping place.

There are no hotel walls around us tonight.

Dinner is prepared in camp, and as daylight disappears, the forest and mountains become our shelter.

Yesterday we learned how the olive can sustain a community.

Today we discover that people have also planted meaning in the landscape.

A path can lead to a field.

It can lead to another village.

And sometimes, it leads to the sacred.

We wake in the high country and continue our journey eastward toward Taza.

For the past two days, the Rif Mountains have enclosed us in a world of olive-covered slopes, forests, villages and winding paths. Today, the geography begins to open.

We continue on foot through changing mountain vegetation, with stretches of forest accompanying us as we gradually leave the Jbala and Rif country behind.

Then the landscape begins to reveal something remarkable.

Ahead lies the Taza passage.

To the north rise the Rif Mountains. To the south begins the Middle Atlas. Between them, the land opens sufficiently to create one of Morocco's great natural corridors between east and west.

For centuries, people understood what geography had provided here.

Travelers passed through.

Caravans passed through.

Armies passed through.

Goods, languages, beliefs and ideas passed through.

Taza grew because the mountains opened.

As we approach the city, we begin to see why this place has always been more than simply another settlement along a road. Whoever travelled between eastern Morocco and the great plains and cities of the west eventually had to understand this passage.

The landscape itself directed movement.

We take time to explore the surrounding country as we make our way toward Taza, noticing another gradual change in vegetation. The Mediterranean character of the Rif begins meeting the forests and higher landscapes associated with the Middle Atlas country ahead.

Our journey is changing with it.

We eventually reach Taza and settle into our hotel after the day's walk.

Tonight we have crossed an invisible threshold.

Behind us lie the olive hills and forest paths of the Rif.

Ahead are caves, higher plateaus, deeper forests and eventually the great cedar country.

Taza stands between them.

Throughout this journey, the trees have been telling us where we are.

Today, the mountains tell us where we can go.

This morning we remain in the Taza country.

After breakfast, we spend some time discovering Taza itself before leaving the city for the surrounding highlands.

Yesterday we learned why Taza grew where it did. Today we begin to understand the landscape around it more intimately.

The country here is shaped not only by mountains and forests, but also by limestone and water.

Over immense periods of time, water has worked its way into the rock, dissolving, carving and opening spaces beneath the surface. The result is a landscape whose story continues underground.

We travel toward Friouato, where one of the region's remarkable cave systems opens into the earth.

Standing at the entrance, the Green Highlands suddenly acquire another dimension.

Until now, we have read this country through olive groves, forests, villages, footpaths and mountains. Here we begin to read what lies beneath them.

Depending on local access and conditions, we explore the accessible part of the cave with appropriate guidance. This is not simply an adventure underground. The formations around us are evidence of the patient relationship between rock and water—a process measured not in human generations, but in geological time.

Emerging again into daylight, we continue on foot through the surrounding mountain country.

After the enclosed world of the cave, the openness of the landscape feels different.

Forests, rocky slopes and high ground stretch around us, while villages appear where soil, water and terrain have allowed people to settle. We stop along the way for lunch and continue exploring at an unhurried pace.

This is a day for looking closely.

A mountain is not only what rises above us.

Its geology determines where water travels, what soil develops, which plants can grow and, eventually, where people and animals can live.

By late afternoon, we return to Taza for dinner and overnight.

For several days, the trees have been teaching us about the surface of these highlands.

Today, water and stone tell us an older story.

Tomorrow, we climb again.

And the cedar will begin to appear.

After breakfast, we leave Taza and climb again toward the high country.

The road carries us toward the mountain landscapes around Bouiblane and Marmoucha, where the cultivated hills of the north gradually give way to wider plateaus, deeper forests and pastoral country.

And then, at last, the cedar appears.

Its presence tells us immediately that we have entered another ecological world.

For days, the olive has accompanied villages, farms and settled agriculture. Here, at higher elevations and in a colder climate, the great cedar belongs to the mountain.

We leave our vehicle and meet a local family who provides the mules that will accompany us through the day's walk. Supplies are loaded, and once again our pace slows to that of the trail.

We walk through a landscape of cedar, carob and mountain vegetation, crossing grazing country used by shepherds and their animals. Depending on the season, we may encounter families moving with their flocks or shepherds tending animals across the high pastures.

Such encounters are never guaranteed or arranged for display.

Pastoral life follows grass, water, weather and season—not our itinerary.

That is part of what we have come here to understand.

In the highlands, movement itself can be a form of adaptation. Animals must reach pasture. Water must be found. Families learn when the land can sustain them and when it is time to move elsewhere.

The landscape may appear empty from a distance.

Walk through it with someone who knows it, and it becomes a map of grazing grounds, springs, paths, shelter, weather and memory.

We stop along the way for lunch and continue through the mountain country at an unhurried pace.

Above us stand the cedars.

Some have survived seasons beyond the memory of any living person. Beneath them generations of shepherds, animals and travelers have passed, each depending in different ways upon this mountain environment.

By late afternoon, we establish our camp.

Dinner is prepared as the temperature begins to fall and the last light moves through the trees.

Tonight we sleep in cedar country.

There are no city lights and little to separate us from the sounds of the forest and the enormous mountain sky.

At the beginning of our journey, the olive told us where people had settled.

Here, the cedar tells us something different.

We have climbed high enough for the landscape to become wilder, colder and more demanding.

And yet people have learned to live here too.

The cedar does not tell us that life has disappeared.

It tells us that life has adapted.

Morning comes quietly in the high country.

After breakfast, we leave our camp and begin descending from the cedar landscapes toward the more settled country that eventually leads us to Fez.

The change does not happen suddenly.

The high pastures gradually give way to cultivated land. Forest becomes orchard. Shepherds' paths begin meeting village roads. Houses appear more frequently, and the vegetation once again tells us that altitude and climate are changing.

The fig returns.

Like the olive, the fig belongs intimately to rural Moroccan life. It asks relatively little from difficult soils, gives shade in summer, and produces fruit that can be eaten fresh or dried and kept long after the harvest has passed.

For generations, trees such as these have been part of the quiet economy of mountain households.

We travel through the country around Ribat Al Khayr, stopping along the way to walk through villages and cultivated landscapes before continuing toward Sefrou.

As we descend, water becomes increasingly visible again.

Streams feed orchards and gardens. Fruit trees gather around settlements. Agriculture becomes more varied, and the pastoral world of yesterday begins blending into the farming country below.

Eventually we reach Sefrou.

For centuries, towns such as Sefrou connected the surrounding countryside with larger networks of exchange. Farmers, shepherds, craftsmen and merchants brought the products of the mountains and valleys into its markets, while goods, news and ideas travelled back in the other direction.

The highlands were never isolated.

Their paths eventually led somewhere.

We continue through the country around B'Halil, where the relationship between geology and human settlement takes yet another form. Houses, gardens and older cave dwellings remind us again of something we have encountered throughout this expedition: people adapt not only to climate and vegetation, but also to the physical form of the land itself.

Then we continue toward Fez.

The approach to the city feels different after a week in the mountains.

Fez does not suddenly replace the rural world we have travelled through. In many ways, that world flows into it—through food, markets, craftsmanship, migration, trade and memory.

By late afternoon, we settle into our hotel.

Tonight there are walls around us again.

The olive introduced us to the settled hills.

The cedar accompanied us into the high country.

The fig has followed us back toward the orchards and towns.

Tomorrow we enter Fez.

And there, we will discover where many of these mountain roads eventually led.

This morning we enter the medina of Fez on foot.

After a week in the highlands, the city may initially seem like another world.

The silence of cedar forests has been replaced by voices, workshops and crowded streets. Shepherds' paths have become narrow alleys. Instead of scattered villages, thousands of houses, markets, mosques, fountains, workshops and neighborhoods gather within the walls of one extraordinary city.

But the mountains have not disappeared.

Look carefully, and much of what we encountered during our journey has followed us here.

Olives and olive oil fill the markets. Figs and other dried fruits arrive from the countryside. Wool becomes cloth and carpets. Wood enters the workshops of carpenters and carvers. Herbs, grains, leather, livestock products and seasonal produce flow toward the city from the lands surrounding it.

The countryside feeds the city.

And the city gives something back.

For centuries, Fez has been a place where farmers, merchants, craftsmen, scholars, pilgrims and travelers encountered one another. Goods came here to be exchanged and transformed, while ideas, techniques, religious learning and fashions travelled outward again along many of the same roads.

We explore this relationship as we walk through the medina.

At Seffarine, the sound of metalworkers reminds us that raw material becomes useful through human knowledge and skill. In the workshops and souks, we encounter crafts whose techniques have been transmitted through generations. At the madrasas and around Al Qarawiyyin, another kind of exchange becomes visible—the movement of knowledge.

We also encounter water again.

Fountains appear throughout the old city, reminders that even here, far from the springs and mountain streams through which we walked, urban life depends upon the same essential element.

As we move through the medina, our guide introduces the important monuments and histories of Fez, but we also leave time for what happens between them: a craftsman at work, bread being carried to a neighborhood oven, vegetables arriving at a market, the smell of cedar, the sound of water, or a conversation that could never have been scheduled.

By now, perhaps, we are looking differently.

A market is no longer simply a colorful place to photograph.

We know that everything in it came from somewhere.

Behind a fig is a tree.

Behind wool is a flock.

Behind cedar wood is a forest.

Behind olive oil is a hillside.

And behind the city are countless roads leading back into the country we have just crossed.

Tonight we return to our hotel for dinner.

For seven days, we followed paths through Morocco's Green Highlands.

Today those paths brought us to Fez.

The mountains did not end at the city gates.

They entered with us.

This morning we leave Fez and travel west toward the slopes of Zerhoun.

After the density of the medina, the countryside opens again.

Fields, orchards and olive groves return around us, and with them comes something familiar. We have spent much of our journey learning to read Morocco through its landscape. Today, as we begin our journey back toward Casablanca, the land offers us one final chapter.

We travel first toward Volubilis.

The ruins are usually introduced as evidence of Rome in Morocco, and certainly they tell that story. But after our journey through the Green Highlands, we can also ask another question:

Why did a city grow here?

The answer begins with the land.

This is fertile country. Agriculture, water and access to routes of movement made settlement possible long before modern roads existed. Grain, olives and other agricultural products helped sustain the communities that lived here and connected them to a much wider Mediterranean world.

We walk through Volubilis not simply among columns, mosaics and stones, but through the remains of a society that also depended upon the landscape surrounding it.

From here, we continue toward Moulay Idriss Zerhoun.

The white town rises across the folds of the mountain, its houses gathered around one of Morocco's most important sacred places.

Moulay Idriss I occupies a profound place in Moroccan history and memory, and his sanctuary made this mountain town an important destination for pilgrimage. Once again, we encounter something that has accompanied us quietly throughout our journey:

The sacred has a geography.

We found it in Ouazzane.

We encountered it again at Moulay Bouchta in the mountains.

We felt it in Fez.

And here, at Zerhoun, landscape, history and devotion meet once more.

We stop for lunch and spend time discovering the town before continuing toward Casablanca.

As we travel west, the mountains gradually recede behind us.

Tonight we return to the urban world and settle into our hotel.

Tomorrow we leave Morocco.

But before we do, perhaps we can look back at the country we have crossed differently.

The olive was never merely a tree.

The cedar was never merely a forest.

The mountain path was never merely a trail.

And the zawiya was never simply a building.

Each belonged to a relationship between people and place.

The Green Highlands have been telling us that story from the beginning.

Today, we discover that the land remembers.

After breakfast, we transfer to Casablanca Airport for your departing flight.

The mountains are behind us now.

For ten days, we have followed a greener Morocco through olive-covered hills, forest paths, sacred places, high plateaus, cedar country, orchards, villages and ancient routes that eventually carried us into Fez and back toward the Atlantic.

But perhaps what remains will be simpler.

The smell of an olive grove.

The shade of a fig tree.

The silence beneath a cedar.

Tea shared somewhere along a mountain path.

And the realization that some of Morocco's most beautiful places are not those that ask to be admired.

They simply ask us to notice them.

We came to discover Morocco's Green Highlands.

Perhaps, somewhere along the way, they taught us how to see.

Ma'a Salama — travel in peace.