a Geographer's Place

Ruins. One word that always seems to make me giddy. I’ve always liked ruins – especially the ones you can climb on/around/over/under/in and explore. That’s how it’s been ever since I was a little kid and my parents took my brother and me to Mesa Verde’s Anasazi ruins. Jordan has lots of ruins. Like a lot a lot. People have been inhabiting this region of the world for a long time, so the ruins span millennia. Yes, there are the well-known ruins like Petra and Jerash , and lesser-known places like Kerak and Umm Quaiys. But the Kingdom also hosts numerous others, some of which barely have a name, and others that are literally in the middle of nowhere. These forgotten fortresses have been a big component of my research here. Qasr az-Zahib . As I was taking pictures, a little Bedouin kid who was out herding sheep and goats came over with tea. We chatted a bit. He showed me a nearby cemetery, a still-functioning well, and another set of presumed Crusader ruins that I can't fin...

To complete the Traveler-tourist circuit, we had to visit Jerash. While we also wanted to drop into Ajloun, that wasn’t in the cards. There has to be some give and take on a circuit like this, and you also have to account for those unforeseen instances  so very common in fieldwork  (surprise meeting with the government concerning your research, for example). So off to Jerash we went, via a few backroads that afforded us fantastic views of the landscape surrounding Amman. More than a few times there were remarks about how European the physical landscape looked, noting that the barren-of-houses-yet-green-of-agriculture hillsides is actually how Amman proper looked before the population (refugee and immigrant) surges occurred. En route ,  we stopped for coffee (“Hot Strawberry” for me—like hot strawberry milk…yummy!) at a roadside petrol station called “Integrated Market”. True to its name, the place had snacks, drinks, paper towels, dish soap, mops, pliers, frozen foods....