The Olive Route: A Personal Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean

Over the years, I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Carol Drinkwater's trilogies chronicling her trials and tribulations restoring an old olive farm in the south of France, and find this book to be no exception. In The Olive Route, Ms. Drinkwater sets out from the Bay of Marseille on a personal journey into the heart of the Mediterranean. Fortunately for her readers, she has an adventurous spirit and an inquisitive nature. Upon receiving a photograph of a man standing inside what is claimed to be a 6,000 year old olive tree, Carol is intrigued by what she sees and the seed of discovery is planted. Traveling much of the time on her own through Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Greece, Crete and, finally, Israel, Carol discovers many secrets, and unveils elusive mysteries, regarding the olive and its origins. Along the "Olive Route" she introduces us to the people and cultures, old and new, who helped cultivate this lovely little fruit and reveals how it, too, helped influence a region. Part travel log, part memoir, Carol takes us on an exploration into the origins of a tree of which over the years she has come to know quite well and for which she has great admiration. Upon her return home from her explorations, Ms. Drinkwater offers us an affirmation of Nature: "The blessings bestowed upon us of light and darkness, of day and night, of sun, heat, rain, of the seasons, of the earth's ability to provide for all our needs. The ability to be born anew."

This book presents itself as the author's journey of discovery, and an attempt to disclose snippets of olive culture around the perimeter of the Mediterranean (which it is), but it offers, in fact, much more than this. Reading this book has provided me with a marvellous romp through ancient history. Thanks to Carol Drinkwater, my knowledge of ancient civilisations has expanded hugely: who was where; where the forces of power moved and when. In short, it adumbrates elements of the rise and fall of the assorted empires of the western and middle-eastern world from the bronze age to the Romans. As well as being secured in history, this book allows one to explore landscapes and cultures framing the Mediterranean, and to relive olive nurturing, harvesting and production. Drinkwater is superb at inveigling stories from rusty, isolated humans hidden out of sight for most of us, buried deep in their own communal aegis. She conveys their personalities and lifestyles in observant, entertaining descriptions. The "I" is there to add interest, but it does not over-dominate and intrude too much into the narrative. The protagonist remains the olive, and its tale is marvellous. Also important for me as a reader was the sense I had of Drinkwater's own love, not just of the "silent masters over time", her olives, but of natural places in general, and of the joy to be had in the simple, seemingly insignificant pleasures of the rhythm of life. Through her I learned of ancient aggressive misuse of environmental resources due to greed - the denudation of former fecundity. This was a trait I thought to be the sole perquisite of modern industrialised humans. Her book also caused me to ponder the ancient roots of greed and destruction, and the will to power that seems to have characterised humans as long as we have been handling tools. There is much to be learned through this very readable history cum travel tale.