STORIES AND DATES

On family road trips to the ski resort in Big Bear, California, where we intermittently rented cabins on winter holidays, we used to stop by a roadside stand to drink date milkshakes. Delicately sweet and topped with creamy foam, the sand-coloured beverage was made with locally grown dates; that minor agriculture detail was the real treat. Unlike the other vegetable crops that we were familiar with in the region, these dates hung high in column-like shoot trunks, which were shaded by a crown of pinnate leaves. The date tree looks royal, often inspiring associations with Mesopotamian antiquity, holy rituals or modern-day beach holidays. The stands were placed along the roadside not only to sell milkshakes, but also as rest stops from which to admire the scenic view. The majestic desert setting was different from the wide boulevards of Los Angeles, famously flanked by towering, ornamental fan palms, and even more cinematic than the city itself.

Imagine an old and narrow California highway, just like those lean ones that appear in film noir, planted in the midst of acres of palm fields. This is the Coachella Valley in Southern California, a region that was midway between our hometown in the northeast desert valley of Baja California, Mexico and the snowy mountains where we skied. Visionary horticulturists and entrepreneurial farmers imported palm seeds and shoots from North Africa and the Middle East to cultivate dates here in the barren land. The earliest known farming of date palms in the United States is attributed to Spanish Jesuit missionaries in California in the eighteenth century. After years of several unsuccessful crops, the missions began to nurture the palms