Bone collectors

by Mike

We’ve lucked out again and found ourselves staying on the grounds of an 11th century chateau near Poitiers – it’s in the middleish of France. Azure’s cousins (hi!) were caretakers here back in 2002 and Azure stayed with them for what’s become a legendary stretch of three months of roaring fires in the medieval fireplace and drinking games and long dinners and various other shenanigans. This year, having nothing to do and no more scooter, we decided to head to the chateau for the end of our trip.

The chateau seems to collect characters, one of whom is Patty, an American ex-ish-pat who’s living on the chateau grounds for now but nothing’s ever really declared here. Where will you live next year? Eh. What did you do for a living back home? It doesn’t really seem to come up. What’s the latest on the financial cri- don’t even think of bringing that here. Here’s one thing I’d love to share about her, though – she collects bones for soup stock. She boils the bones “to nothing” over days, mixing them with lettuce or brandy or whatever’s around and adding water as needed. Her last stock was 72 hours of boiling. We haven’t tasted one yet, but I’ll write about it when we do.

During the days we walk the treed trails on the grounds, we work in the garden, we cook a little lunch, we investigate mysterious buildings on the 50-acre property. The days are great. Night, though, surges onto the place. It paints the windows black, it suffocates flashlights. It squeezes my ribcage until it itches and it makes footsteps sound like faint music. Night sneaks into every empty room, making noises along the way, and waits, and you can hear your breath the whole time. The chateau is enormous, it’s too big for the night.

At dinner Patty talked about the ghosts. There’s one that sits down on the edge of her bed while she’s sleeping, she can feel the impression. Someone else talked about a man in a long coat coming into the room at night and speaking French. Apparently the long coat man has been seen a couple times here – he belongs to the chateau, the story goes. I was wondering what I’d do if I came face-to-face with the man in the long coat one night, too late, maybe too drunk. I’d like to think I’d talk to him and find out what he’s about. But that’s not what I’d do.

After the ghost stories I stayed up to take some night photos of the chateau from the entrance. It was midnight and clear, a moonless night. Here’s how night photos usually go – I click the shutter and start counting. I look up at the stars, I look for other angles I could try, I listen to the night until I get to whatever I’m counting to and then I close the shutter.

Here’s what happened last night on this ancient property: I clicked the shutter and started counting. I was counting to 50. When I got to 10 I heard footsteps in the trees that never materialized into a person. I noticed that the vapor from my breaths wasn’t disappearing and I wondered how many breaths the air could accumulate. When I got to 20 I could sense someone was behind me. I looked over my shoulder into the thick darkness but I kept sensing they were behind me after I’d turned. At 30 my heart was racing and I was taking shallow breaths so I might be able to hear anything coming at me. My ribcage was itching and I was imagining my death. At 40 the tree I was under burst into noise as an owl decided to flee right at that moment. At 50 I closed the shutter, grabbed the camera without looking at the photo and sprinted back to our room where Azure was waiting for me.

So that’s what I’d do if I saw the man in the long coat – I’d sprint.

(this was written on the wall when we got here….)

Fatherlessness

by Mike.

This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of art in the chateau:

It’s hanging in one of the master bedrooms – the room, in fact, where Joan of Arc slept when she stayed the night.

It says, “FATHERLESS – Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.”

I want to do a re-enactment of this, maybe holding a cat up to a picture of a dog.

Railing shadows

by Mike

Last night I met some very nice railings in the chateau’s stairwell.

The Daily Grind

by Azure

The chateau will always need something done on it. When one project is finished, another shows up. I was glad to see that this hadn’t changed since the last time.

Our current project is repainting the windows for the reception hall. The caulk was old, so we took the rotting stuff out and laid new beads. On Tuesday, we will start the painting.

It had been sunny in the mornings with clouds coming in later. It rained the first two nights we were here, but now the forecast calls for blue sky days everyday.

Mike will lay the caulk and I will do the finish work, since I have more experience from boat detailing. His job takes a little less time than mine, so he has some extra time for taking photos around the property or napping.

While you are working, it is common to hear the birds, a particular big man at the chateau likes to talk a lot. Patty will talk back to him, just to show him that he isn’t that big afterall, but he doesn’t get the message. He just keeps cooing.

You also find some kitty problems from time to time which need to be dealt with.

At night, we have found a new best friend in the hot water bottle that Linda gave us. It stays warm and keeps our feet toasty all night long.

Slow dog days

by Azure

A quick back-history on where we are staying… In 2002, when Mike and I had only been dating seven months on and off, Mike went to study in Bath, England. Not knowing what to do with myself, I went to visit with the idea that I would travel around Europe on my own for a couple months. As it turned out, my cousin Kim and her fiance at the time, now husband, were care takers at a chateau in France for their family friends from San Juan Island, Nash and Linda. I decided to go visit Kim and Adam for a while. Mike came to visit that Christmas. The following year, I returned with my mother and my friend Cori and my mom’s friend Cari for Kim and Adam’s wedding.

I honestly didn’t think I would ever be back here for any length of time. When we found out that our scooter was illegal, however, it changed our plans more than we expected. A passing comment lead to a call that lead to an email that lead to me calling Nash and finding out that they would be here at the exact same time that we needed a place to go. A quick train ride from Paris led us here, meeting a family that we had never met before in their chateau 6000 miles from where either of us were from.

I was reluctant to come back for a few reasons. First, I felt that the experience that I shared with Kim and Adam in 2002 was so unique and special that I couldn’t hope to recreate it in any way. When I returned for the wedding, it was hard seeing the chateau on such different terms. The first time I stayed here it was quiet, there were only three of us living on the grounds and at night we had all 15 bedrooms to ourselves. There were no rules or schedules and we shared fires and dinners and talks every night. At the wedding, with the place full of people, there were more rules and deadlines and obligations and I had to section off the new experience so it didn’t taint the old in any way.

When we returned this time, I prepared myself to section off another part for this experience. I didn’t know what to expect and it wasn’t really clear what we were going to be doing here. However, upon arrival, we found that this place still cultivates the pace of life that we had become so addicted to the first time that we had visited.

We got in at about 5pm and walked around the property. The place looked exactly as I remembered it. We sat down for a slow dinner with great food and wine and conversation and we sunk into the slowness and haven’t sped up since.

This pace is possibly where my heaven exists and coming from a week of my lesser hell it is only highlighted even more. My heaven is a place where no one has anywhere else to be for long long periods of time. This is a place where people expect to eat together without the television on and where it is expected that it will take a couple hours at least. It is also a place where all of the participants appreciate food and appreciate the process (both Linda and Patty are high caliber cooks and Linda loves to garnish).

I have expressed my love for this lifestyle before, when we were in Brazil with our friends and we all knew we were going to be hanging out every day and every night for over a week. What I was surprised to find is that I am enjoying it so much even with people that I had never met before. I think this place draws it out of you. But also, the people who are found hanging out at a chateau in St. Julien L’Ars in March are also the kind of people who are taking life pretty slow.

I don’t want to seem like I’m all “best time ever” but today was the day I realized that the dinners weren’t going to stop and I changed into chateau gear. Literally. In 2002 my chateau gear was an over-sized navy blue vest with a duck apron underneath. Today I found a floral dress/apron that I put on for the brocciu making and don’t plan on taking off.

Check out a few photos from the last 2 visits to the chateau.
Look how young we are 2002
The wedding 2003

Brocciu two

by Azure

I attempted my first unassisted batch of brocciu today in the kitchen of the chateau. Everyone else had gone to the brocante (a big flea market) in Chauveny and Mike and I stayed back to have a leisurely lunch and make the brocciu.

Patty had introduced us to her cheese man who is impossible to get near at the Chauveny market, but parks his cheese van by the Abbey on Fridays and is available for chatting. We had asked him for some “petite lait”, pronounced “petite lay” which, coincidentally, Patty would also love to receive from the cheese man, though not for the purposes of making brocciu.

He brought us two buckets of it to the market (for free) and told us where to go to get the fresh milk. We went to the farm and asked for some fresh milk and they brought us 2 liters for 2.50 euros. A cheap project!

When I started the process today, it looked like everything was going well. I figured out the temperature conversions and did everything right on schedule. We figured out that at the exact same moment that the pot boils, the brocciu arrives. We watched and watched and it started to smell like cake, just as it should. It arrived. The foam on top began to part and we turned off the flame and I dipped my ladle in the pot to scoop it out and there was nothing there. What happened to the brocciu????

We had done everything right, I checked and rechecked the proportions and couldn’t figure it out. The tough part was that I could see the brocciu in the pot, but every time I tried to scoop it out, it went through the holes. I then realized that the woman, instead of giving us fresh-from-the-udder goat milk had given us normal drinking milk. Sure enough, I took a sniff and it was so mild. I drank a little and tasted normal, 2% or maybe even fat free.

Mike said that he hadn’t thought it would go smoothly the first time. I was disappointed, but with the discovery of the wrong milk, I was relieved that it wasn’t human error. I could at least have hope that I could still make brocciu given the correct ingredients.

I have decided to try again. I’ll have Mike call the farm ahead of time and ask for all the correct ingredients. I am determined to get this right before leaving here, so I can be confident that I know how to make it. Stay tuned for its arrival.

Patty’s Flowers

by Mike

Patty scatters flowers around the chateau.

No lesson learned

by Azure

We woke up yesterday morning feeling some of the residual effects of the night before. After resigning ourselves leaving the scooter at Jean Paul’s house and selling it for whatever price we got on ebay (I truly would have been happy to get half of what we paid for it) we went out to see the only American we know in Paris–a bar owner from Florida whom we met because he was the guy who bought the bar that Mike worked at in 2001. The night only ended with a reinvigorated hope and some good old American can-do attitude. He thought we could sell it here or there for this much and our eyes lit up and we thought that maybe we’d sell it easily again.

Nope. And luckily this revival of ambition didn’t last longer than 9am the next day. We really had to leave Paris ASAP and kept telling ourselves, we’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul. We’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul.

We packed up our bags and loaded the scooter for the real last time. It was a little nerve wracking because we didn’t have insurance and it was registered under Jean Paul’s name, so he was liable for us. And, as I pointed out to Mike, driving through and around Paris put us in contact with more people and police than we had seen the whole rest of the ride. We looked it up online, however and saw that the fine for driving without insurance was a mere 1500 euro fine, but no jail time. Of course our motto of the day was “No jail time!”

We made it ok, of course. We drove past the Palace of Versaille and I caught my first glimpse of the enormous place, up the side roads and made it to the “Buffalo Grill” parking lot where Jean Paul would meet us. There was one random checkpoint at one of the roundabouts, but we made sure to exit the roundabout before we got to the checkpoint. Of course my heart raced.

When we parked the scooter in Jean Paul’s garage and he said we could leave it there until next year when we came back to pick it up, I paused and thought, well maybe… My mind appears to be completely incapable of remembering pain or fear. We still had our helmets on when he mentioned leaving it, my heart was just slowing down from fearing the police, and I actually considered it. Of course we wouldn’t do something like that because that would be a pain for him, but now I think why wouldn’t we buy another scooter? We would just go about it differently. No lesson learned.

He invited us in for a glass of wine, we got to witness the most incredible being on the planet, Morgane’s dog and later, Jean Paul took us to the RER. The next part was shockingly fast, coming from a vehicle that went a top speed of 70km/hr, but averaged more like 50. To ride the scooter from Paris to Poitiers would have taken us about 14 hours, we would have scheduled two days for it. When we fell asleep on the train out of pure emotional exhaustion, we woke up to find we were over half way there. The whole ride only took 1.5 hours. (on another note: I just don’t think you see the country the same way when your are going that fast)

“The most incredible being on the planet”

Nash picked us up in the old white chateau car. It was good to see that some things don’t change AND that some people appreciate good old vehicles. We pulled up to find many of the flowers in bloom and the place to be just as tranquil as I remember it. I feel like we’ve been put out to pasture here to spend the remainder of our time roaming about and doing projects on the grounds.

The Chateau car

We had dinner (Salmon topped with creme fraiche, caviar and mint, sides of potatoes, broccoli and salad and of course cheese and wine and chocolate) with Nash and Linda (the owners of the chateau), their son Syrus (sp?) and Patty, a woman I met my first time here who also cooks for guests and has made a really great part-time life here. We had great, easy conversation, though afterward I feared we talked too much about ourselves-oops. It turns out we have a lot in common, not only our living proximity to Greenlake, but our love of food and slow life and gardening and just the ability to live part, or in their case all of our lives over here.

We are staying in the building that is the back side of the chicken coop (this reference is probably only good for Kim and Adam). The chateau grounds house a small abandoned village, where all the work used to be done. There is a barn, carriage house, paper press building, a place to house the farm equipment, the list goes on. These buildings go about one city block along an unpaved road. All of the buildings are being turned into either living spaces (ours has been turned into a 3 bedroom apartment) or spaces to house events. Our room is lovely and the bed is the most comfortable we have had in a long long time.

When we walked back from dinner in the darkness I felt so at peace, so opposite of how I had felt the night before — we are already a whole world away.

Cheap hotel, plastic bottles of wine, lesser hell.

by Azure

We are still in Paris. My meh has turned to a MEH!!! We’re not actually in Paris, just outside in a really really cheap hotel. Although we’ve ended our long and abusive relationship with Avventura, the shop that sold us the scooter, we are still in Paris suburbia hell. Mike says there are days in Seattle when he feels like he has spent the whole day doing nothing. That is our existence here. We wake up, post some ads on the french websites listing the scooter and wait for emails to arrive that we neither fully comprehend nor have the means to respond to. That doesn’t stop us from trying, but it does hinder the amount of responses that we have gotten to our replies. Or maybe not. Maybe these guys are just too lazy to write back or come see the scooter.

Here are some of the correspondences over the last week (translated to English of course).

“Hello, I am interested in your scooter. Is it still available?”
“Yes, when are you available to come see it?”
-nothing-

“Your scooter interests me very much, I propose 1000 euros?”
“Yes, that sounds fine, when would you like to see it?”
-nothing-

“40,000 miles, I will propose 800 euros.”
“No thank you.”

“400 euros.”
“Go fuck yourself”

“400 euros.”
“Sounds great, when can you come look at it?”
-nothing-

“Your scooter looks perfect, but I can only afford 800 euros.”
“Ok, that will be fine, when can you come look at it?”
“I can bring 300 now and the rest in one week.”
-we’re leaving tomorrow?-

“Is your scooter still available? I can trade a computer and 100 euros.”
“Ummmmmm”

“I am interested in your scooter, I can trade it for my diesel truck”
“Thank you for your response, however, the ad says I must leave Paris and can’t take a scooter, how will I take a truck?”

And it goes on and on and on. Not one person has looked at the scooter. If they did, I know they would driven away with it. Mike finally wrote a rant on Craigslist, but since no one looks at it here, there were no responses, oh unless you count the fake response that you get every time saying that they want the “item” and they will pay by check and also pay for shipping. Um, do you know that it is 200 pound scooter?

Today we thought we had found luck when we called a scooter shop and they said they bought scooters. When we took it out there, the guys said it was of NO value to him. NONE! We said, well is it worth 10 euros? And he said, well of course. To which we responded, well how much is it worth then. We are starting to think that people think differently here. Almost everything in worth something, especially when it has taken two people to Corsica and back with no problems last week.

As we drove back, I kept looking at people walking. I thought we should give it to an immigrant man or someone who it would be of value to. At this point it is no longer about the money. Current Azure has already borrowed the 400 euro that she is losing from future Azure that is richer and has disposable income. Or maybe she is just less cheap. We respond to the ads where people are nice, they use common courtesy words like “hello.” We want the scooter to go to a good home, since we know what it has and can do for someone.

It is a difficult situation since we no longer want to be here, we are ready to move on, it’s time to put the scooter to bed, but we don’t know how. Tomorrow, we are planning to take it to Jean Paul’s house and sell it on ebay. After MUCH worry and discussion, it seems the best option. If all goes well, that will be the end of our journey together. If all doesn’t go well, we will be paying a 1500 euro fine for not having insurance. Just a little more to borrow from future Azure I guess.

As it turns out, we might end up selling it before it gets to the house. There seems to be a few serious options that we found tonight. We can’t count on people anymore. That is the hardest part for me, not being being able to control the situation at all. We don’t have a phone and email is hard for a lot of people. There are so many queries, but no follow through. It’s like dating and I can’t tell if it is them or us. As Mike says, we love her too much to burn her, so the search continues for someone else to love her.

Point of Fashion: Sebastien Chabal

by Mike

Meet Sebastian Chabal (aka, Future Mike). He’s a French rugby player and the current ideal man in French advertising:

Chabal is almost “cheval” which means “horse” and “cheval” is close to “cheveux” which means “hair.” All of which is very manly.

Now you know what to expect from the pictures next winter.

Quickies of l’Arc de Triomphe

by Mike

There’s gotta be a business in this: go out, take some photos, head to a cafe with wifi and upload over coffee.

There are worse places to be stuck.

by Azure

We arrived in Paris with a real “meh” attitude (meh is the noise one makes when they are whining.) The whole story is that we really didn’t want to come to Paris at all. We found out we were uninsurable soon after I arrived in Nice, but with all the paperwork, we figured no one would ever check up on it. We continued to ride because that’s what we loved doing. But, on our last day in Corsica, we got word from the scooter shop that we weren’t technically allowed to own the scooter and that it wasn’t registered. Hmmmm.

Not that we were being legal by driving it 1000km from Nice to Paris, but at least we felt like we were making an effort to be legal. Now that it is parked outside the hotel in Paris, I can breath a little better. There were a couple nights of up most of the night worry, thinking about Mike being arrested, but they passed and as soon as we mounted the scooter in the morning, I again realized that no one gives scooters a second look no matter what they are doing that is illegal.

More worry came in Pont de Vaux when a black cat crossed my path and I told myself not to be superstitious, but less than a minute later, I heard Mike swear and the scooter crash down. When I looked over, I thought everything was alright, but then on the ground was our right mirror. Crap. We drove out, worried that we would be pulled over for not having a mirror and it was a tense ride. We pulled into a couple places to see if they had mirrors, but they didn’t. We would have to go to a bigger city to find a Piaggio specialist.

Relief came when the last place we went told us it wasn’t obligatory to have a right mirror in France, only the left. Wow, lucky! We rode on, past town after town, Gendermarie after Gendermarie, each time trying to act cool. Mike would even wave at the motorcycle cops, but to no response. Thankfully.

When we got to Paris, we found a cheap hotel near the scooter shop and parked ourselves semi-permanently. We didn’t go into the city, Mike fell asleep before 10pm and I shortly after. We were exhausted from navigating our way into Paris on all side roads (it’s A LOT harder than you would think.)

Saturday we woke up and went to the shop to talk to Gilles about the scooter issue. No easy solutions, we can’t sell the scooter without a carte grise and we can’t get a carte grise without being residents, but we fiscally own the scooter. Hmmmm. We’ll either need to transfer it to our friend’s parents or to find a buyer ASAP. So, we have her up online, with URGENT: RIP US OFF PLEASE attached to the ads. We’ll see.

But not all bad things come out of being stuck in a beautiful city that has brought us much joy. We went to Mike’s favorite falafel place that he found roaming around in 2001. Every time we come here, we hit the shop, only this time, it has gotten popular. So popular that we waited 45 minutes for a falafel. We walked up Rue Rivoli and I got a new windbreaker. Later, we went out for a real night on the town. First the Absinthe bar that Anthony Bourdain had on his show. It turns out it’s totally a metal bar with Goth paintings of naked zombies and stuff. We tried a couple different kinds of Absinthe and ordered a second glass of our favorite. Then we totally college-kid’s-first-trip-abroad-ed out and went to The Moose Bar, a Canadian bar that was showing all the NCAA tournament games. We ate a burger and a stir fry and had Pastis. Mike was likened to an old Frenchman for ordering it, which I know he loved. He chatted up some youths from Maryland and we sat and watched the Huskies go down. All in all, we got back to the hotel in better spirits about being here and plans for what to do for the next few days while we figure out how to deal with our baby girl.

One Last Ride

A video of us packing up this morning.

by Azure

I started to get a sore throat at the farm the day before we left. As it turned out, it was a good thing that I had to ride while sick because it left me no time for moping or whining. Well, except the one day that we decided to stop and stay in Noyers, I moped and ate soup that day. The other days, we rode at least 7 hours a day. We saw all new territory for both of us that revived the dream of living in France. The center was so typical, we loved it.

We decided to drive early each morning, stop for breakfast, drive a while longer, have a full lunch, then grab a light dinner. It made it easier to handle the long days (if you look at the mileage, we only go about 300k per day, but going an average of 40km/hr it doesn’t go fast). On Monday we took a 40 minute nap in a field after lunch and then got back on and kept riding until sundown.

The days were the warmest yet. We lucked out and ended up driving on what seems like the first sunny week in mainland France. Monday, the thermometer topped at 70 degrees. Tuesday around 65 and Wednesday, back up to 68 or so. It made the rides so much easier and we could go until the sun was low.

here are our routes…
Monday Nice to Valreas

Tuesday Valreas to Pont-de-Vaux

Wednesday Pont-de-Vaux to Noyers

Thursday the scooter stayed locked and I stayed in bed most of the day.

Friday Noyers to Paris

Um, excuse me

Which direction to Paris?

What you find in the middle of France

by Mike

We’ve spent the last two days in the medieval town of Noyers-sur-Serein right in the middle of France, about 200km south of Paris. It’s typically French, as typical as I’ve seen with their admirable attention to detail and commitment to a high quality of life. The Bourgogne region has fairytale castles, rolling green hills with woods filling the crevasses and lining the rivers… the movie Chocolat was filmed here.

This town – Noyers – fills the bend of a river and its buildings have exposed beams on the facades. They lean over the stony street like they’re about to give up, and life goes on as usual. There are only 700 residents here. We saw signs for an “Old Chateau” so we walked out of town and followed the river against the foot of a forested hill as it bent to the south. The next sign pointing to the chateau was so white-washed that we walked past it and only realized we’d missed the turn a mile later. So we turned around and found the path and turned up the hill. We went up the steps, steps made of wood, and walked up the hill through the trees until we came to a plateau where two towers were being excavated. It looked like the top of the towers were still original, they stuck up like broken fork tines, but the bottom was being expertly redone by a team of archaeologists, I hope.

There was a sign pointing to a panoramic view, so we followed the path across a golden field, then we crossed down into a valley and up the other side. When we got to the top we kept walking through the woods but noticed that the ground was strange – it was bumpy and just didn’t look right. We started to notice a lot of white stones and we started to realize that the path was taking us over a buried city. To the left was a wall pushing out of the ground, to the right the inside of a turret had been exposed. The valley we’d walked across had been a pair of city walls. We’d later learn that we had walked near a dungeon and a church and the town square. All buried on the top of the hill.

Anyway, we’re going up to Paris today to say goodbye to the scooter. We’re heading home in just a few weeks so we feel we should start trying to sell it now rather than wait until we’re desperate. Neither Azure nor I are looking forward to being back in a big city, but it’ll be brief – after it’s sold we’re going to go back down south for the end of the trip.

Some good looking ladies

Today’s Route (by foot)

by Mike

I had the good fortune of Azure getting sick, so I went for a long walk today from Noyers-sur-Serein (where we’re staying) to two neighboring towns along the border of pasture and forest. At one point the path was an old Roman road. It was about 9km (5+ miles) and it took me around 2.5 hours.

France is a walker’s paradise – there are well-traveled trails crossing the entire country and excellent, abundant maps that explain the routes – but this was the first time I’d ever taken advantage of them.

I also ran into a few good looking ladies along the way…

Nice to Valreas?

Today’s Route
(Where the hell is Valreas?)

by Mike

Today we went north, skirting the Alps and following rivers until we got to an area called the “Drome.” The “Drome” is a lot of nice hills where the sun still penetrates and there’s pine and lavender and olive trees.

We had a small breakfast in a small town – Touet-sur-Var – then lunch at a bistro in a town called Barreme where everyone in the town passed through and kissed on the cheeks. The whole way up, the river(s) were small in their gravelly banks, cutting new designs for the season.

We stopped on the side of the road near a small tower (more of an agricultural tower than a tower for defense) and took a half hour nap in a field in the sun and three cars passed the entire time. We could hear the river and birds. It was a nice break.

We pushed over a pass and came out in the town of Nyons, which was too expensive, and finally found a cheap hotel in Valreas. Last night I got a free pizza because I was the first American the owner had ever seen in town. We talked about Will Smith, Robert DeNiro, Michael Douglas. I tried to pay but he refused, so I told him that when he got to America there was free pizza for him there. Pass it on.

A goaty weekend

by Mike

UK resident Ellen Frye paid us a visit in Nice this weekend and we had a ton of fun. Ellen got to ride the scooter along the coast into Nice on Saturday morning, then we immediately went to Italy for a multicourse lunch that featured much food and much wine. We drove to the town of Eze where we saw the best view on the Riviera. Then we went back to the hotel and checked our email for a while.

For dinner we went to another Italian restaurant – La Voglia in Nice – and had their antipasti misti that included most conceivable foods.

The next morning we went to Antibes and talked about things that were impossible. We walked through the market and along the old wall, we/I had a great conversation with some Harley owners who had fascinating jobs & lives.

Finally we drove up to the farm and introduced Ellen to Margarite, Claude and a new-born goat:

It was an eventful visit to the farm – it was the first time that the year-old goats were to go outside the barn, so Claude gave us all bamboo sticks to guide them and the adults down the hill. It didn’t prevent them from freaking out and one ran all the way back to the barn. Azure had to go and fetch him and carry him to the others, and even when he was within eye and earshot of the others he still didn’t get that he’d have to actually walk to get to them, so he started going the wrong way again. Eventually he was herded to his mother.

We then sat down and made a little fire in the woods on which Claude boiled some water for tea. We had tea and talked about Corsica and cheese.

When we were done with the tea Azure grabbed the pot to bring it back to the house, but Claude said to leave it for the next time.

Favorites from the brocciu making

Philippe

Dominique

Azure

Cheeses

Magic in the Maquis

by Mike

Philippe’s grandfather was found dead in the Maquis with his back against a tree and his rifle across his lap. Philippe sat in the position to show us as he retold the story, holding his arms to his chest as if clutching a rifle. “The Gestappo – the Italian police, you know? – they were in the Maquis on a full moon night and saw the light shine on the barrel. When they found him he was dead. Heart attack at 46.”

Philippe shares his grandfather’s passion for guns and hunting, as many men do on this island. A common scene was the Hunter’s Bar in Ota: a bunch of men sat drinking Pastis and looking at guns on a computer or in magazines. They wore camouflage jackets and hats and there were boar’s heads and stuffed birds on the walls. They poured more Pastis and played cards and other hunters came and went, everyone greeting everyone else.

I asked Philippe if he hunts with dogs and he said he doesn’t, he prefers to hunt at night. “Wow, that’s intense,” I said.

In the book we’re reading about Corsica (Granite Island by Dorothy Carrington) there’s a chapter about other night hunters, the Mazzeri. The Mazzeri were improperly baptized individuals who lived in the villages but apart from the people. They had the gift, though, of foretelling death. At night they’d hunt in the fragrant Maquis and kill the first animal that came along – a dog or a boar or whatever. Then they’d roll it onto its back, look in the face and recognize somebody from the area. In the morning they announced the news that the person they saw would die within a year.

Carrington writes that the Mazzeri didn’t actually cause the deaths, rather they interpreted what was sent to them. They were compelled to go into the Maquis to hunt just as the animal was compelled to cross their path. It was Destiny, and their only part was to read it. But she writes that night hunting becomes addictive for some Mazzeri, despite their reluctance to read more deaths.

The closer you look at the tradition of the Mazzeri, the further back you look “into the night of time,” further back even than the megalith builders who inhabited the island thousands of years ago, whose works you can still see and touch, faces carved into upright, human-sized stones. The Mazzeri reflect a people grappling with the basic human activities of hunting and dying at the dawn of cognizance.

When I asked Father Joseph if the megaliths were interesting to visit, I was kinda annoyed by his answer, “Well, they’re ok if you’re interested in rocks and old stuff.” But now that I better understand the historical context I can see why he answered that way. The megaliths (“rocks and old stuff”) were symbols for the beliefs and traditions that Christianity struggled for a thousand years to dislodge. The megalith builders were active on the island since 3000 B.C., while the traditional customs & beliefs lasted from the dawn of cognizance deep into Christianity’s crusade – even up until the Second World War Corsica remained an island writhing in the coils of busy myths. By contrast, Christianity has only been here since about 500 A.D. That means that in the year 3509 A.D, it will still be another 2000 years before Christian beliefs will have been on this island as long as the megalith builder beliefs have been here to now.

A couple weeks ago I wrote to you about touching the stones that ancient people touched and trying to imagine what compelled them to build. I wrote that I hoped “my mind would be refilled with the mind that built those walls” and maybe I’d tap into something fundamental to the human experience that I’m missing now. Only I failed to connect. Obviously I don’t believe I can conjure the minds of the past, I don’t believe in that. But I’m starting to realize that a fundamental piece of human experience that I’m missing is the very instrument that allowed people to communicate with their ancestors – magic.

The disappearance of magic is a symptom of the changed pace of the world. I think that the key to understanding another person’s experience is living the rhythm of their life, and to understand the wall builders I’d have to quit using a car and stop working a job and extract the internet from my body and ignore the media. It would mean living with the seasons and working with my body and living a shorter life but maybe living in constant wonder.

Philippe, stroking the barrel of his gun, said, “This is my dream, realized. I wanted my life to be hunting, guns, motorcycles, cheese, goats.” He didn’t mention his wife and daughter in the next room. “And now I have it.”

We left his house late at night and as we rode home I thought about what it would be like going into the Maquis with a rifle and just sitting and waiting and listening. I thought about what I would feel if I sat still for a night, and what I’d hear if I didn’t talk, and what I’d see if there were no lights, and what I’d sense if time and rhythm slowed to heartbeat and breath. I wondered if Philippe was addicted to night hunting like the Mazzeri and if I could be too.

The scooter pulled through the night to the crest of the hill and from a height that felt like floating, we looked down the spine of Corsica. There were a few towns hidden in folds facing the sea. It felt mythical at that time, and the next night we went back to the same spot to take pictures. I thought about my own dream realized, honestly: traveling with Azure by motorcycle (the scooter has done fine) with a camera and my journal, trying to learn the rhythm of other people’s lives.