dana

i spent this past weekend with my friends mikki and matt hiking in dana nature reserve, a national ecological/biosphere reserve in the south of jordan.



dana was beautiful, a green oasis in an arid desert climate, with wildflowers of beautiful colors everywhere.



there were also an uncommonly large number of thorny/spiky plants, and i have numerous scratches to show for it.


dana village is a tiny collection of simple buildings overlooking the valley.



one of the most beautiful moments was hearing the sunset call to prayer echo off the valley walls with a background choir of birds chirping.


the other sound that made full use of dana's echoing space were the donkeys braying. now every american child knows that donkeys make the "hee-haw" sound, but have you ever actually heard a donkey bray? you would remember if you had; they are flippin LOUD. and it's funny because they're these cute and meek looking friendly creatures that generally just stand around contentedly, but when the emotion hits to make them bray they really let loose- even without the help of an echo their screeching/barking/uncomparable sound can be heard a long ways away, but it was almost comical to hear the peace of dana intermittently broken by some perturbed donkey.
the other interesting moment of this weekend was our hike to the spring. nabil, the owner of our hotel, had suggested we take the short twenty minute walk to a nearby spring, so we followed his advice. as we walked the surroundings got greener and greener so we knew we were heading the right way, and we passed irrigation channels with running water so we knew we were close. after a little while when we still hadn't found the spring, we backtracked, thinking we had missed a turn, and when we ran into a jordanian family picnicking, we asked if they knew where the spring was? "right there!" they replied, pointing to a small pool of inch-deep water that channeled a small stream of water from the mountainside into the irrigation channels.



we had been picturing a river, and mikki and i had even contemplated bringing our bathing suits, and what we found was just a small waterflow, but we realized that in a country where water is not easy to find, even a spring like this would be considered a big deal. definitely an amusing cultural moment though :)