Turkish Landscape

We started in Ankara, headed south, and crossed the Taurus range. I think the landscape, though long- inhabited and bearing traces of human presence since the Neolithic, would seem more familiar to an inhabitant of the Amercan West than an Easterner or European. The strangest thing for me was the abundant groves of nut trees and the omnipresent flocks of sheep, each accompanied by an Anatolian shepherd or two, often wearing spiked collars.


We passed the volcano of Hasan Dag ...


...and crossed the Taurus range, still forested...


..to eventually end up in the southeast near Syria: desert with irrigation:


That's a shepherd in the background-- you don't get too close.

All landscapes remind me a bit (or more) of home-- I seem to gravitate to such places.