Follow the Path of Greatest Uniqueness

The first 'Twin Peaks' moment was the goats in the trees. We had hitchhiked for nearly 1,000 Km without seeing so much as a sheep doing a handstand but today was different. And it began with the goats.

We left the slick highway which had faithfully hugged the chalk cliffs like a piece of string on a wave and descended into the unknown, five of us crammed into the back of a Grand Taxi. Ahmed, our one-legged driver was not prejudiced against dirt tracks and faithfully continued as before, carelessly hurtling down the cliff face, his unrelenting maniacal toothless grin goading us with mad delight in the rear view mirror. We hoped, insh'Allah, that today was not the day that his death wish was to come true.

Beyond the strange goat fruited trees the point of Imsouane came into view, from which the most perfect waves peeled into the most perfect barrels with the most perfect consistency. Perched above the point our destination was crowned, surveyor and secret-holder of this quixotic otherwordliness.

And it was here in this most modest of villages that we met him: Mohammed, our host; our chef; our wiseman; our guru; our Pharaoh; our King.

From a hut fit for demolition we were served a seafood delight gastronomically superior to the finest European restaurants (or so we conjectured) from a man (or so we believed) that possessed the poise and grace of a dancer.

Enchanted and transfixed I and  another accepted his invitation to share a bottle of local red wine and a packet of smokes in his home, a simple shack overlooking the point break.

Over the following hours we were witnesses to true alchemy as this extra-dimentional being transfigured the mundane and commonplace into the glorious, confirming to us the truth of that cliqued adage that true travel really is more a mental rather than physical journey.

As this mystic performed reiki over the out-stretched body of my now surrendered girlfriend I sat, astonished at the smoke he seeming funneled out of her belly button causing her such emotional catharses that she wept.

As night drew in and the moon rose, the flickering candle light cast surreal shapes upon the walls as his feline features blended in and out of formlessness.

It was truly Lynchian but as I sit here, writing this, that surrealism still feels more authentic to me than the daily life most of us coin 'real'. And that's why, whenever I see anything as juxtaposed as goats in trees I make a promise to myself to always, always follow it.