I have been sorting through the photographs from Dan’s and my trip to Morocco last month. There are about a thousand of them, so this is big job. Now that “film” has gotten so cheap, we take so many pictures. Since it now seems evident that it will be some time before I can publish this whole trip, I thought I’d get started with a random favorite photo here or there from out of the pile.

These goats seemed happily ensconced in this argan tree. Argan trees grow only in Morocco. They produce nuts from which people make an oil that allegedly has healthful properties and seems to work well on dry skin. It is nearly as impossible to escape Morocco without a argan-oil product as it is to escape without a rug.

After we stopped and I took this photo, the shepherd–an old man with astonishingly bad teeth–appeared seemingly from nowhere and demanded ten dirhams (about $1.20). I didn’t mind paying him. The absence of goats in other nearby argan trees strongly suggested that the shepherd had put these goats there somehow. But ten dirhams seemed excessive in a country given to exaggerated bargaining. I gave him the two dirhams that were in my pocket, and he seemed well pleased. I probably overpaid.