ABSTRACT
My first week in Palestine has been spent in the trees. Every morning, I wake up at sunrise to walk with farmers to their olive groves, where we climb the ancient trees and fill our shirts with olives, taking occasional breaks to sip fresh sage tea and admire the scenery. It is fall, the time of the olive harvest, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian olive trees burst with ripe purple olives, to be plucked and marinated or pressed for fresh olive oil.
