Seeing neither forest nor trees...

Sometimes, when I'm just out wandering in my own head, I see the forest and sometimes I see the trees...well not real trees, because where I am in Afghanistan, trees are few and far between. I am told they are out there and, in fact, I have seen a few trees on Kandahar Airfield (KAF), which is a huge  base of operations for NATO, DynCorp and where I hang my personal hat when not out at a forward operating base training. At any rate, there are about 3 really stressed out looking eucalyptus trees there on KAF, which I likely would never have noticed at all as covered in dust as they were, had it not been for a rather raucous flock of birds which drew my attention as I hustled myself over to the weekend haji market to oggle the local trinketry.

I have kind of a history with eucalyptus trees beginning with a trip to Morocco in the early 90's where, in the middle of the desert, in an area totally devoid of other flora and fauna, I witnessed a eucalyptus tree full of goats who had climbed right up the trunk and branches and were bleating amiably as they munched a leafy lunch. There must have been a dozen of them up in that stunted little tree and something about the obvious camaraderie of the group put me in mind of dinners on the church grounds with my grandparents during my childhood. I would have sworn those goats were smiling and chatting among themselves as they ate their eucalyptus, just as I remember the parishioners doing years ago over their plates of  "tater" salad and "nanner puddin". In Iraq, I used to run my hands over moist new eucalyptus leaves then snurfle them just to inhale a good whiff of their aromatic oil - I found the scent cleared my sinuses and perked the old body right up. I even took to carrying the occasional eucalyptus branch into the portolet with me because they smelled so distractingly clean and fresh - the eucalyptus leaves...NOT the portolets. On a good day, when recently cleaned, portolets in Iraq smelled strongly of spearmint, quite ruining that flavor for me forever.