The cemetery in Pinareddu

by Mike

Azure doesn’t remember the cemetery from the story I wrote. One of my formative travel experiences was here in Pinareddu in 2001 and I’d written a short story in which the cemetery served as a landmark.

She remembers a lot of the other parts of the story though, even one I’d forgotten – the ‘storm.’ On my first night here, sleeping alone in Francois’ empty house, I was terrified as I listened to the wind bang the shutters against the walls all night. It wasn’t even a storm really, just a windy night, but it was so dark and I was so alone that I threw my headphones on, took a sleeping pill and hid under a pillow as soon as the noises started. It was probably 8pm or something. Azure also remembers the part where I walked home from town at night and two dogs came out of the black to bark at me like they were going for the throat. I was sure they were going to kill me, I just about shit myself and ran to the house and probably took another sleeping pill under a pillow.

Azure’s on the back of the scooter as we drive through town and retrace the story. Those damn dogs are still there at the bottom of the hill and farther up I point through the trees to a white balcony, “That’s the room I slept in.” It’s high on the hill above Pinareddu with a complete view of the town, bay and sea.

I take Azure up the road toward Francois’ brother’s house and we stand outside the gate. “I walked into his house and the walls were covered in moths, his dogs were jumping up and snapping at moths under the ceiling fan.” When I had finally arrived on Corsica, after weeks of fantasizing, I was overwhelmed by the experience of travel and this house was folded into the stature of those feelings. It remained large through relived memories and retold stories, but now with Azure it looks small.

My memories of Pinareddu are exhausted so we turn around. We drive down the hill, past Francois’ home, past the beach and the two restaurants and past the cemetery.

“Do you remember the cemetery?” She doesn’t.

Francois had cancer and was dying when he drew the map on a napkin for me. We were at his kitchen table in Bellevue before my first big trip. He said, “The cemetery is the first thing you’ll see coming into Pinareddu, you’ll pass it there on the right.” I could see he was walking the path in his mind as he drew the map, rewalking it, reliving memories from his ancestral fishing village. The black lines ran from Bellevue to Paris to Nice to Bastia and to Ste. Lucia. Then another set of lines showed the five kilometers down to the town, the cemetery and then the road to his brother’s house where I would find a key to Francois’ house. I could stay there if I could get there. It seemed impossibly distant. He must have known that he would never come back. He was too sick.

I made it to Paris and I made it to Nice. Then I made it to Bastia and finally to Ste. Lucia. I was thinking of him as I started walking the winding road, I retraced the lines for him five kilometers down toward the sea and Pinareddu. I imagined that from Bellevue, he was walking through me and looking at the Mediterranean and smelling the trees again. He was passing the cemetery on the right again, and he recognized the people at the restaurants and he surveyed the beach. I imagined him walking past the dogs up the hill to his brother’s house for the key. Then we walked to his empty home where he could remember the smell of the trees and he knew the shutters banged at night and he could see the sea from the balcony.

Though the cemetery was just a landmark on the map, I’m sure his grandparents are buried there and their parents, and when I walked through town I wondered if he would be buried there too. I wondered if, as he walked the town in his mind for the last time, he expected to be buried there himself. He died that summer. He gave me a complicated gift that sparked a new direction in my own life and I never thanked him. Francois, at the end of his life, gave me a map and with it the promise keys in far away places.

“There’s nothing there.”

We just drove around the Southwest coast of Corsica (the area to the north of Sartene, for anyone ambitious enough to follow at home. Here’s a map.) We looked at a stretch of 20 km we’d have to drive and Azure said, “There’s nothing there….” the map was emptyish.

Here’s what was there:
– There was a white horse in a little grassy area in front of a stone shed. The shed was on the side of the mountain and had an amazing view. All of these things had views, so assume that they did.
– There were large stone walls that were falling apart, covered in moss. They were so large they stood out compared to all the other ones we see.
– There were a few scattered cemeteries with amazing views of the valley. There was one grave that didn’t have a headstone or a cross but two small slabs of rock like bookends and a pile of rocks in between.
– There were a lot of trees, it was totally forested. Half the ride was on the north side of the ridge and half on the south. It was the late afternoon, so the valleys were illuminated.
– There was a small vigil on the side of the road – a red candle with a picture of the Virgin Mary.
– There was the most perfect stone wall we’ve seen – all the little rocks fit perfectly in the large ones and it was white.

This area is so rich in secrets. There are so many things that we want to take pictures of but just pass because if we stopped for everything it would take an hour to go a mile, and that’s just on the roadside.

Sartene sunset storm

My First Big Ride

by Azure

Mike wanted me to talk about my first big ride (we drove from Nice to Toulon). I think he just wants to prove that he wasn’t being a baby when he was saying how tiring it was riding the scooter from Paris to Nice. I never thought he was, but in case there is any doubt, I’ll confirm, it is hard riding 4 hours on a scooter and I wasn’t even driving. It gets cold at the end, you get tired and especially going into cities, the signs all point to the highways, so you end up driving around and around trying to avoid them. It didn’t jade me against scootering though, two days later, we went on a 5 hour sightseeing trip and it was awesome! I think it feels different knowing you have to get somewhere versus wanting to see something. Even after 5 hours of looking, I could have done more.

The video above is from our loop, not my first big ride. I didn’t take any photos on it, since I was sick and tired. The video is at sunset north of Toulon. Mike referenced it in a previous post.

Don’t Think We’re Homeless

by Azure

We took the night ferry to Corsica last night. I love riding big ferris, especially at night. They are like second hand cruise ships, with bars and cafes and sleeping cabins. Of course we were too cheap to spring for a cabin, but they wouldn’t let us opt for nothing, so we ended up with something called a “pullman” which Mike thought was going to be similar to a hurricane Katrina refugee bed, but ended up being like a big airplane seat. The problem was that they were in the center of the ship and it always freaks me out not to have a window, maybe something about the movie “Titanic”. When we got on, we saw people (seemingly upstanding citizens, in fact) reserving the large cushy benches in the dining areas. We soon caught on that you could really just sleep anywhere, so we searched out the only soft places left, which were the big benches right in front of the snack bar. A whole family was spread out on both sides of one and we took one side of the other. We got to lay flat and slept uninterrupted until 6am when the captain came over the loud speaker saying everyone had to get out of their rooms. It ended up being perfect for us and we now know that we don’t even need to book those silly pullmans.

I got to see my first sunrise over the ocean and we were able to hop on the scooter and ride down the coast in the morning light. For a long while there were no clouds in the sky. The cherry blossoms are coming out already and some parts of the drive smelled so sweet. It was a beautiful day.

SUNRISE!

Bonifacio

Sweet Ride!

by Mike

From Toulon we drove east brushing the foothills of the Chaine de la Sainte Baume mountains, through one-street towns like La Valette, Soulies-Pont, Cuers and Pierrefeu.

I told Azure I really look forward to the day when I meet a Frenchman who says, “I’m from Toulon,” and I say, “Oh! We were in Toulon!” and he says, “Well, actually I’m from a really small town an hour outside Toulon that nobody’s ever heard of,” and I’ll say, “What’s the name of the town?” and he’ll say, “Les Mayons,” and I’ll say, “We’ve been there!” and he’ll buy me a pastis.

From those foothills we crossed a valley and entered a different mountain chain called the Massif des Maures and drove up a valley to Collobrieres, a town that’s crowned itself capitol of hazelnuts, I think. There were little pictures of nuts everywhere, stores sold nut butter and so on. It’s a small town on a small river with a small 12th century single-arch bridge that’s still used as the main road for cars. It’s a really small bridge.

We went into the local bar to grab a hot chocolate and it was about a dozen men and Azure and me. There was a guy at the table next to us looking at the horse racing schedule in the paper and once he’d made his choices he called rudely to the bartender to come over and place the bets electronically for him. The bartender did it, then the guy left the bar. Then he reappeared outside in the window next to me smoking a cigarette and watching the race on the TV above my head.

The room next door was a hopping restaurant (in these small towns there seems to be only one restaurant where everyone goes) and at about 2:00pm the waiter called in through the doors, “25 cafes!” The bartender gave a look – he only had one espresso machine. Someone in the bar chimed in with, “Make it 26!” which drew laughter.

We drove farther up into the mountains and followed a sign for “Notre Dame des Anges” (Our Lady of the Angels), and the road kept going up and up, riding the ridges of hills. Finally it looped around the highest hill and dropped us at the steps of a sanctuary built at the crest in 571 A.D.! From the sanctuary you could see both the Alps (which we actually couldn’t see because of trees) and the Mediterranean 20km away. The sun was SO bright, I was able to shoot pictures of Azure laying on the ground with her helmet on, exhausted from the ride, at 100 ISO on f22 with no problem.

The inside of the sanctuary had a little natural light from a (dirty) skylight and the blue walls were covered in relics and plaques that people had sent as thanks for their miracles. It was one of the odder churches I’ve seen and I’m glad I got some good pictures.

We walked from the dark sanctuary into the bright courtyard and I had to shade my eyes. A man walked right in front of me and I turned to look – he was a young black monk in a violet robe and he stopped in the shadows, his body curved in front of a wooden door. The top of the door was round and he was trying to unlock the door with his set of old keys. His skin was a beautiful smooth brown like hazlenut butter, like the color of the wooden door, and I decided I had to ask if I could take his picture. He hesitated, smiled and said, “I’m sorry, no.” Azure and I learned our lesson – never ask. It’s a picture I’ll remember, anyway.

From Notre Dame des Anges we descended the other side of the Massif des Maures and hit the town of Gonfaron, took an immediate right and went back into the mountains through Les Mayons. We had trouble finding the road to get back in, but once we did we were rewarded – the sun was getting low (it was about 4:30 and we were on the Northeast side of the mountains) so there was orange light to compliment the spectacular views of the valley. In addition, the road went from paved to dirt so suddenly there wasn’t even that gray-black strip of asphalt we usually have to tolerate, instead it was just many different shades of orange and brown leaves, dirt and wood.

The road got rougher and we kept climbing higher. Soon we could tell that the road was in such bad condition that either they had never paved it or it had been unrepaired for decades. We passed several private property signs and by the time we suspected we weren’t allowed to be where we were, we were too deep into the drive to turn around.

We kept driving and bumping and after half an hour my heart was racing some, I’ll admit. I was worried what would happen if we got a flat tire right before sunset when we hadn’t seen another car on the road, hadn’t seen another person for 10 kilometers and we weren’t convinced we were even going the right way. We came to a five-way intersection of dirt and torn-asphalt roads. The signs were all faded and I didn’t trust they were still pointing in the right direction. We decided which road to go on based mostly on where we figured we shouldn’t go, and we headed west.

The road remained dirt and we started seeing a house here, a fence there, and when we turned a corner there were two guys digging a rock out of a hillside.
“Hi, can you tell me which way to the D39?”
The guy didn’t want to give me a straight answer, then finally said, “You know, this road is forbidden to vehicle traffic, it’s private.”
“I know, I’m sorry, we’re honestly lost and we’re trying to leave, I’m sorry.”
“Where are you trying to go?”
“Toulon, eventually, but right now we’re going to Collom… Collombro…”
“Collombrieres?”
“That’s it!”
“Keep going straight, the road will take you to the D39.”

When we finally got back to the paved highway there was a sign facing anyone entering the dirt road, “This road is forbidden to vehicle traffic under penalty of lawsuit.” Yikes. I think the people back in those hills really tried to protect their privacy, to isolate themselves from everyone else. When I think of people like that I imagine them to be loners or Unabomber types… different. But these guys were completely personable and eventually kind. They looked normal. They could have been anyone we’d have met in Toulon or Nice.

We finally wound our way out of the mountains and back to Toulon. We hit a supermarket and made a picnic, then got in line at the ferry terminal for an overnight boat to Corsica.

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Olives and Stars

by Mike

I picked olives today. I picked them squatting down until my legs tingled, then I grabbed a big rock and set it down and sat on it so I could extend my feet in front of me and pick olives between my knees and out to the sides in a radius. When the radius was empty I stood up to pick olives with my legs spread apart and bending at the waist until my back hurt. I picked them with my head down so my neck got sore but my eyes got better at picking purple or black from the grass. My fingers got better, too, at picking purple or black from the grass. Sometimes I would grab an olive with a blade of grass and when I tried to lift them the grass would pull the olive out of my fingers and back to the wet ground, and this would happen a couple times before I got the olive free. I picked the olives with my thumb and forefinger and transferred them to my curled palm and sometimes I picked enough that no more would fit, but I didn’t notice so every time I put one in my palm another would fall out. I tossed them in the basket. If the basket was near, I would pick olives from the cold dirt with my right hand and transfer them quickly to my left, then from my left into the basket. I picked olives from under tufts of grass, next to rocks, out from goat shit, pried from mud, out of curled leaves, out from under thorny vines. I picked olives and thought of maps and I started picking towns from Corsican mountains. I sometimes wondered if that green patch over there was hiding a town and I always found an olive. I picked olives long enough that when I looked up I was surprised to see the valley.

I took a nap at lunch and dreamed I was picking olives in the mountains in Provence and I was happy in the dream.

Tonight in the cold I looked at the stars with my head tilted back and my neck was bent back and it all felt good. I looked at the stars through the olive tree branches and I tried to pick out which star would poke through olive silhouettes in a photo. I looked at the stars actually twinkling and thought about how people noticed the twinkling a hundred-thousand years before me, how it was probably one of the first things people noticed. I looked at the twinkling stars obscured by vapor from my breath. I looked at the stars and remembered the seas when I noticed the depth of Mediterranean blue the first time I was on a ship to Corsica. As my eyes adjusted I found stars in the black between constellations. I looked at the stars long enough that they didn’t seem painted on a ceiling, but they seemed to be floating deep down in the water.

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Dear Mom,

Thank you for preparing me so well for olive picking. Your Easter celebration has adequately trained me for finding and picking olives off the ground, out of ledges and around trees. You could improve on the training process by moving the location of the candy hunt from the warm cozy house to outdoors. Next, it would be better if you could just throw them out in to grass, the taller the better. In addition, you could sprinkle ice around the lawn along with various types of animal poop. Lastly, make sure I dip my hands first in ice cold water to simulate the feeling of being hours into the process. Thanks for your time and I look forward to better serving the Olive farmers of the world.

Love,
Azure

How to make organic olive oil by hand

The gears turning

by Mike

I should say this first: there are very few people who still make oil this way. Margarite said we’re seeing a form or making oil that is ancient. This farm is only one of a couple farms in the region who do it with a wheel, most of the others now use machines to separate and crush the olives, hot water to speed the process, then centrifuges to separate the oil from the water – even the organic places do it this way now. She said that industrial oil is “totally pure,” and she said it in a way that wasn’t nice. Their oil doesn’t have the imperfections that give something taste and nuance. The oil we made spent most of its time mixed with the purple water. Margarite says that the purple oil/water mixture – which gives the oil flavor – doesn’t even exist in industrial operations. The oil spends very little time with the rest. Further, most industrial mills (even the organic ones) are a mixture of many different farms’ olives – A farmer takes X kilos to the mill and gets X liters of oil in return, but that farmer’s olives are mixed with olives from all the other farmers who showed up that day. On this farm, the oil we took out was the from the olives we put in from the trees outside. They were never heated or cooled, and the only thing mechanical was the motor that was used to slowly turn the stone.

In the 1940s Margarite’s dad bought the enormous stone wheel from a mill that went industrial a few towns over – I asked how old the wheel itself was and she said, “ancient.” The gears were built by Margarite’s husband in the 1950s and she brags to me about it all the time. Before the 1950s the stone turned by water power through wooden gears, and I’m not exactly clear how they got the water. And before they had an olive mill they would carry their 300 kilos of olives down to a mill by the river and spend a day making oil and feasting, then carry it all back up to their house.

The oil making process is two parts:
1) Crushing the olives
2) Separating the oil from the rest

Weighing
To start the day we weighed all the olives, then set them next to the mill. Each caisse was about 12 kilos, which makes about 2 liters of oil, and they like to do 300 kilos per batch.

Cleaning
Michel and Lucien cleaned the mill by spraying water into the bowl then letting it drain through the bottom to a holding tank.

Turning the stone
Michel turned the stone wheel a little by turning the closest gear so they could clean where the wheel had been. After they were done they started the motor.

The men dumped the olives into the mill.

The first crushed olives on the stone
The stone then turned for about 3 hours, crushing all the olives and their pits. It was all purple, which is interesting since the oil comes out clear and yellow from this mess. Even at this point the oil is edible off the stone, as long as it’s clear.

Add water.
After lunch, the olives are properly crushed and they add lukewarm water to the bowl while the stone is still moving. If the water is too cold, the oil thickens. If it’s too hot then it cooks a little. Both things change the taste of the olives, so they try to match room temp with the water. For whatever reason the water in this room is heated by a fire.

The water lifts the entire mass of purple to the top of the bowl, and the oil floats to the surface while the stone is still moving. They stop the stone, and that’s the end of the crushing part.

The fryingpan
To separate the oil from the rest they use a couple methods.
The first and most effective is to take a frying pan with a bunch of holes in the bottom and dip it into the mess, just to the depth of the oil. They lift it out and you can see any water drop out the bottom, then they quickly unload the oil into a bucket. At this time there are two people with bundles of branches sweeping the oil across the surface toward the lifter.

Sieving
When the bucket is full, someone dumps the oil through a sieve to remove any little pieces of olive that might have gotten through. If the bucket was pure oil, then that batch goes right into the vat.

Dirty vat and funneling
If they saw water (it’s dark purple) mixed with the oil go through the sieve, then they dump it in a dirty vat. That vat is separated by hand – they lift oil into a funnel that someone has stopped with their finger. After a few seconds they let out some fluid – if it’s water, then they let it run until the water is gone. If it’s oil, they dump the oil into a bucket, then that bucket is dumped in a clean vat.

The net and the press
After all the oil has been lifted out of the mill, they put the remaining olive pulp into a nylon net. The nylon net is put into a hydraulic press and it squeezes out every remaining drop into the dirty vat. Here they again separate the oil by hand.

The drained mill
Back at the mill they unstop the bottom of the bowl and the water goes tearing through a little opening to a holding tank outside.

Collecting more at the tank.
At the holding tank they then repeat the process of brushing oil along the surface, lifting it out with a frying pan, and taking the buckets to a sieve. The holding tank, after its final pass for oil, is drained through Margarite’s property and down to the river.

The final product.

Quality of Life

by Mike

Margarite says times have changed, people have moved away from the valley because it’s difficult to be a farmer. But then I asked if she thinks times will change again and people will return and she answered, “Yes,” without hesitation nor explanation. I didn’t press for details but suspected maybe I’d phrased the question wrong.

When the family arrived I asked the same question to Lucien and Michel – will times change again, will people migrate back to the countryside? They both answered, “Yes,” without hesitation, and this time I pressed for details. Lucien actually will be moving back to the farm from the city in May. He’s about 55 and has never worked on a farm but he’s moving here with his wife – Claude’s sister – to keep bees and harvest olives. I asked why he’d leave the city where he raised his kids and started a business and he said that the quality of life is much better here than in the city… and he’s not the only person who’s noticing. He said there’s a shift in French society right now as people discover the long hours aren’t worth the money. They used to value status, which was attached to their jobs, but in the last ten years people have started to accept less money for a better quality of life. Obviously that status-seeking will endure, but at the margins it’s changing.

Michel, Claude’s cousin, drives up from Nice to mill olives on the weekends. He described oil-making as a passion so I asked if he, too, would come back to work here permanently. Not enough money in it. He has a family of six and he couldn’t support them. It’s good for single people or students, but not families.

Even in the 1950s Margarite’s husband was working another job to supplement their income, they couldn’t make enough from the farm alone. Lucien admitted it’s easy for him to start a new life on a farm because this property is established and owned by his wife’s family. If he had to build this from scratch he wouldn’t change jobs and homes.

When they suggested that this shift was a society-wide change of values, I wondered about the logistics – if I were a young person who wanted a simple way of life in Western Washington, I don’t know if I’d be able to just buy a piece of land and raise crops or livestock. In fact, I doubt I could. Not only do I lack knowledge about crops and livestock, but the land would be so expensive that I’d have to work another job to pay the mortgage. I also wonder how many pieces of land are available that fit the needs of an organic farm when much of agriculture has gone industrial. And we have nowhere to move back to for this way of life, we children of the suburbs. At what point did our families stop farming for food? At what point did they swap tools for pens and seasons for office buildings?

I was curious what he meant, though, so I asked Lucien, “A good quality of life – what does that mean for you?”

He said, “Living at your own rhythm.”

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A l’insu du souvenir

by Mike

Here’s my favorite poem from the night we read with Claude.

by Jelloun

A l’insu du souvenir

Etranger
prends le temps d’aimer l’arbre
accoude-toi à terre
un cavalier t’apportera de l’eau, du pain,
et des olives amères
c’est le goût de la terre et des semences de la mémoire
c’est l’écorce du pays
et la fin de la légende
ces hommes qui passent n’ont pas de terre
et ces femmes usées
attendent leur part d’eau.
Etranger,
laisse la main dans la terre pourpre
ici
il n’est de solitude que dans la pierre.

Translation:

“Without the knowledge of memory

Foreigner
take time to love the trees
put your elbows in the soil
a horseman will bring you water, bread,
and bitter olives
it’s the taste of the earth and the seeds of memory
it’s the bark of the country
and the end of the legend.
the men who pass don’t have land
and the worn out women
wait for their share of water.
Foreigner,
leave your hands in the crimson earth
here
there is no solitude except in the stones.

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Long exposures from the farm

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Carrying Caises

by Mike

I could sit all day in the branches of olive trees looking at the sky through silver-green leaves. In the afternoon a mountain casts shadows on our valley but the sky is still blue and through the silver-green leaves I see jets. When I rest that’s what I do… I sit on the top of the chopped-off trunk, my back against a branch and my feet against another and it feels like the palm of a hand.

If I carry the olive cases high enough then my legs don’t hit them when I walk. I think that’s why biceps are where they are and why some old men have muscles like steel, they work in this way their whole lives. The work can be heavy, and sometimes it’s hard and I’m always using my muscles to move something. I’ve learned to do controlled slides down muddy terraces and scramble up six-foot ledges. I say to Margarite, at lunch, “Je travaille bien pour manger bien,” (I work well to eat well) to which she responds, “Il faut!” (That’s the way it must be!). I’m finding I can put away three portions of each course at each meal and still look slimmer the next day.

On Friday I worked alone in the orchard for most of the day and I worked hard though nobody was watching and I’m not getting paid. Something in me wouldn’t let me work poorly, wouldn’t let me leave an assigned task undone. When I read “For Whom the Bell Tolls” I thought the weakest part of the plot (in an otherwise brilliant book) was the main character’s motivation: if he thought he was going to die while carrying out his orders – and he was working alone – then why follow through? I didn’t think it was true to life. With my own life at stake I wonder if I’d be as loyal, but after working Friday I can see that I have some of that in me. Now I understand that a soldier, well-treated, could be compelled to carry out a dangerous order.

I like using my body for labor. Muscles only work in present tense. One morning Claude and I were chopping logs for firewood. She held a wedge on top of a log and gave me a sledgehammer. This is a woman who pays for life with her hands – can you imagine how nervous I was swinging a sledgehammer at them? Anyway, I asked if she knew much about Buddhism. “I hate Buddhism,” she said. I, too, have a love-hate relationship with it, so I disagreed, then I agreed, then I explained that it’s hard to hate it because there isn’t really anything concrete to hate. She clarified that she hates how fashionable it’s become and how young people come to the farm preaching it. Interesting.

I went ahead with my point regardless: There’s a proverb that says, “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

Claude misses chopping wood since her shoulders got bad. I asked what she did to them and she answered that she worked her whole life. She said she still loves the sound of the wood so I listened to the sledgehammer hit the wedge with a dull ping, I heard the wedge hit the log with a hollow knock, I could hear the wood’s fibers tear and then once, between strikes, the wood continued to slowly split and it sounded like rain.

When the log fell open she held it up and smelled the core, “I love oak.” She savored it the same way she savors poetry. She held it out for me to smell.

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