Holly Brunelle

One of my favorite Louisiana memories is an afternoon I spent with my dog Chewie in Port Fourchon.  It was the summer of 2008, and we were visiting a friend as I relocated to Daytona Beach to finish my master’s thesis.  It was a particularly hot, sultry August afternoon, and seeking relief from the heat, the two of us hopped in my car and headed to the nearest beach.  Once there, we frolicked in the dunes, Chewie chasing birds, rolling in stinky stuff, and wallowing a pocket of water left by an earlier high tide while I trailed behind her enjoying her playful spirit and the cool, onshore breeze.

This day would turn out to be a close second.

After a good night’s sleep, it was off to meet the same friends I’d visited a month before*.  I arrived a bit early, which provided the opportunity to explore the helibase**.  Located on the south end of the South LaFourche Airport, it consisted of two buildings framing a concrete apron, the hangar-office structure to the south I was visiting, and an oil company’s passenger terminal to the west.   My heart lifted as I heard a helicopter approach, an S-92, royal blue with red and white trim which grew closer then alighted on the helipad a short distance away.  As the aircraft taxied in, I could see faces in the windows; and, once it had parked and its rotors had wound to a stop, the faces became disembarking  passengers.  They looked tired, worn from their time on the rig, but perked up as they hopped on the golf cart and rode to the terminal.  That is when it hit me: these were the people I’d worked to keep safe all those years, and their going home to their families tonight was the fruit of my travails.

My eyes were a bit misty as I headed back inside.

We ate lunch one town over. The trip there was a hoot: as we wound along the oaks, magnolias, houseboats, trawlers, and various buildings that lined the bayou roads, I was treated to a narrative of local legends and colorful histories of local landmarks.  After about fifteen minutes we pulled onto a large concrete tarmac, the structures lining it so unassuming that I thought it was an intermediate stop.  But this was the place, and once inside I understood why.  The interior walls overflowed with vibrant paintings, shadow boxes, and recovered wood mosaics available on consignment from local artists.  Our meals were generous, large platters heaped with crab for the boys an equally large salad for me.  Conversation was filled with rich, fascinating stories of offshore flying, bayou life, and Napoleonic law.

The adventure continued on the ride back to the hangar.  As we made our way north, work boats bobbing on the other side of a low seawall, my guide caught sight of a small trailer parked in front of a line of small clapboard houses.  We turned in, and soon I was enjoying a coconut cream shave ice, served to me by a toothy-smiled gent.  The back story was charming: the proprietor was a cognitively-challenged native son who one day as a young adult asked his mom to help him set up a sweet tea stand in the front yard.  The locals, wanting to encourage his self-reliance, frequented it whenever it was open.  Over the years it grew from a table to a food-truck-style trailer with full menu of shave ice and ice creams.

My belly full of good food and my mind filled with tales of derring-do, I headed back to my nest for a nap.

More soon!

* http://www.hollybrunelle.com/?p=256  (Louisienne)

**For those not familiar, oil companies use helicopters to ferry their workers to offshore rigs.

Note:  Louisiana Law includes Spanish and French influences:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana

For me, I-10 across the southern states is a series of bridges.  My trek west began near Pensacola with the long, low expanse across the (surprisingly) blue waters of Escambia Bay, a train running beside me on the sister bridge.  Next it was across the north shallows of Mobile Bay (AL), past the USS Alabama, with a glimpse of the Austal shipyards and the Battle House Hotel building (the shape of which is rumored to be inspired by the S-61) before ducking into the George C. Wallace (yes, that George C. Wallace) Tunnel under the Mobile River.  This is followed by the four-ish-mile expanse over the marshy delta of the Pascagoula River (MS), followed by (just after Stennis Space Center, which back in the day had a great fly-in pancake breakfast) a swoop over the Pearl River. I have always enjoyed these low trestle bridges, and this day was no exception.

At Slidell, Louisiana the highway turns south, and the I-10 Twin Span led me over an east section of Lake Ponchartrain, depositing me near NASA’s Michaud vehicle assemble facility*.  The sky was clear, there was a (again surprisingly) fresh wind off the Gulf, and I was making good time; all in all a good day.  The Almonaster Bridge provided a good view of New Orleans, and it felt nice to be able to take in the sights.  After a quick stop for some snackies I turned south on 310 towards LaFourche Parish and a previous nemesis: the Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge.

The Hale Boggs Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge (those are the ones with cables fanning from towers to the deck like this one in Boston**) that arcs 158 feet (that’s 16 stories, yessiree) above the Mississippi River.  The first time I drove it, back in 2008, I was dizzy with hyperventilation as my car first pointed towards the sky and seemed to hover above the bayou before regaining speed on what felt like a super-duper-sized playground slide.  During my last visit to Galliano (on my first westbound leg, before my time in monastery) it hadn’t been much better. But I had been fine on those rail bridges in France, I told myself.  This day it was going to be different.

The first sign something was up should have been the ambulance.  It passed me, on the shoulder, as the highway straightened on approach to the bridge.  Traffic has slowed a short while before, which offered the opportunity to watch the flashing lights make their way up the incline, over the curve, and out of sight.  As I put-putted past the middle school it was joined by a Highway Patrol vehicle, then one from the local police, then a truck from the local Fire-Rescue unit, sirens and horn blaring to nudge impatient (and somehow unprepared) drivers out of the way.

Now the deal with me and bridges is this: for some irrational reason I worry that if I look out over the side my hands will inadvertently follow my eyes and I will bounce over the wall or drive through the railing into the air, and finish the sequence with a spectacular plunge into the waters below.  Or, even worse, that someone will hit me at high speed and the impact will throw me over the wall or through the railing and into the air, again to finish the sequence with a spectacular plunge into the waters below.  But today that seemed to be behind me.  We were over the rail yard at the beginning of the bridge, and I was fine.  We inched past the Last Exit Before The Bridge; I had this down.  But then, about halfway up the bridge, I realized that I could see the red and blue flashing lights of the emergency vehicles again.

That They. Were. Stationary. At. The. Bridge’s. Crest.

As we climbed, we zippered into a single lane, the left lane, furthest from the railing.  As we got closer, I could see them; about half a dozen cars, all with mild to severe damage, scattered in various positions across the right two lanes of the bridge.  Gaaack!  Some folks were out of their cars, gesturing as they told their stories to the officers.  Others were still in their vehicles, being tended to by first responders.  And what was this?  Fresh scuff marks (and was that a chipped segment?) along the retaining wall?  It was my bridge nightmare come to life (sans the fini flight), splayed across the road beside me.

I felt my stomach tighten and my breath shorten.  Juststareattheplateofthecaraheadofme.  Juststareattheplateofthecaraheadofme.

Youcandothisyoucandothisyoucandothis.

Drat.  Foiled again.

*https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/michoud/overview.html and https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/08/nasa-versus-nature-august-29-2005/

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_P._Zakim_Bunker_Hill_Memorial_Bridge

It was decision time.

I was back in the Florida panhandle where Marigold had graciously opened her home to me once again.  We had quickly settled back into a routine of cook, clean, tend to the little ones, walk the dog, and repeat.  But this time there was an edge to it… the programmed part of my adventure was complete and I had nothing on the horizon.  So it was cook (three times a day? plus snacks? seriously?), clean (how is it possible for three small humans to generate this much laundry?), tend to the little ones (including the budding physicist*), and…

One big part of this sense of foreboding was that my car registration was due in less than a month, and this re-registration required a legal permanent address.  I had expected this to come naturally, an extension of opportunities that would present themselves during my journey, but so far… nothing.  All I had was physical exhaustion from my travels, and compromised sleep cycles from my time in France.  Florida had me glowing constantly in the heat, and any inadvertently exposed skin was covered with itchy bug bites.  It was decision time, and I wasn’t sure I would make a good one.

The plan had been to spend time as a monastic, either in Santa Fe or Marin, but during my time at the two Zen centers I had encountered a deep hostility towards the military and veterans, the same hostility they claimed to be against and above.  As I criss-crossed our nation, other possibilities had presented themselves as possible places to land: Albuquerque, home to the Jolly Green schoolhouse** and a University of New Mexico professor whose research interested me; Paso Robles, its rolling hills close to my family and childhood friends; Mojave, the west coast home of the commercial space program; central Florida, hotbed of military and civilian user experience design and familiar from my grad school days; Okaloosa county, near Duke Field, Hurlburt Field, and friends from my time at Nellis and Osan; and Las Vegas, so many good memories and great hikes. Now it was crunch time and I had to pick one.  I went down the list: no existing support structure, too expensive, too meth-y.  Orlando and all its ‘lakes’ was too wet; Hurlburt and Duke, once sources of support, now felt gloomy.  Left on the list was Vegas, the home I had promised to return to once my grad school adventure was complete.

My bones ached and wobbled as I carried my boxes to my truck.  I was tired of driving, long hours of black pavement, vibrations from the road fatiguing my body.  I wanted a bed to call my own, a kitchen to create in, a space that didn’t change from week to week.  I had gone to monastery hoping to re-connect with my true nature, expecting to find a gallant adventurer.  Instead I had found a deep homesickness, but for a place and time no longer available.  I felt lost and broken, in much the same way as I had sixteen years before, when my life had been torn apart on a hill just outside Area 51***.  I was  going home, not in triumph as I had expected, but in what felt like defeat.

Once the truck was full, Marigold’s dog, Zipper (who had entertained me with walks each evening), did her best to block the door, registering her opposition to my departure.  With tears in my eyes and a kiss on her cheek I placed her behind the baby gate so I could leave.

I pointed my truck west, and drove towards the next leg of my adventure.

• http://www.hollybrunelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DSCN1864.jpg

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/58th_Special_Operations_Wing

*** https://lasvegassun.com/news/1999/mar/16/few-answers-in-crash-cause/

After an overnight in Roissy and another (coupled with breakfast with a friend) in Washington DC, I was back in Florida, this time Orlando.

The trip back had gone relatively smoothly: the TGV to Paris was on time as was the flight to DC.  At Dulles there had been a bit of a hiccup: while waiting for my checked luggage, residue of the boar sausage in my packed lunch attracted the attention of a cocker spaniel who just happened to be an officer with the Department of Agriculture; after a quick look through the rest of my backpack I was allowed to continue on my way.

The plan was to spend a few days with my friend Nebraska*, catching up with her and doing some housekeeping items.  But I was in for a treat: my tales of orienteering (land navigation with a topo map and wet compass) had caught her son’s interest (ROTC cadet who will henceforth be referred to as ‘the Pup’), and as luck would have it, there was a permanent course near her home.  So one morning we dug my compasses out of my bag, downloaded and printed the maps**, and drove to the local park where the permanent markers were hosted.  Once there, I provided a quick tutorial (map symbols, what the markers might look like) in the shade of some mossy oak trees; and then we were off. The first control was a quick find on the other side of a wide field; the next one was a bit more tricky, tucked in a hollow behind a stand of palmettos.  Her son took to the sport right away and we soon fell into the pattern of him leading the way and finding the controls (with an occasional assist from this old goat) with Nebraska and me lingering behind, catching up with what we’d been doing since my visit on the outbound leg.  After stalling at the fifth control (we mistook one road for another) we quickly recovered, making near straight approaches to each of the final three markers***.

But our fun was not over.

Once back at my truck, Nebraska checked her messages and found one she needed to follow up on.

So while she returned her call from the shotgun seat and the Pup explored some nearby exhibits, I sat in the driver’s seat and sipped from my lukewarm bottle of water.  The wildlife around us was active: an armadillo exploring the base of a nearby tree, some squirrels quarreling among the branches above, and a herd of heron-like birds strutting along the road.  While I did find the birds interesting, my attention focused on the squirrels, and soon I was reminiscing on all the fun times I had watched my late dog Chewie ‘play’ with squirrels.

“Hey!”  Nebraska was shooing something out of the car, one of the birds, a large, cheeky, scarlet capped fellow who had wandered up to the open door and poked his head into the cabin.  Chastised, he came round to my side of the truck to see what I was up to.  After giving me a long hopeful look and the door behind me a few exploratory pecks (there are beak dents to remember the day) he abandoned us to interact with a pair of females nearby.

“Is that a Sand Hill Crane?” Nebraska asked once she had finished her call.   Glory of the smart phone, we quickly verified ‘yes’.  “Oh my God!” It turns out that during her childhood in (you guessed it) Nebraska, and every winter her parents (both university professors) would bundle her and her siblings up for a drive to the Sandhills, a series of grass-stabilized sand dunes between I-80 and the Pine Ridge Reservation.  Once there, they would huddle in the cold with binocs, scanning the hills for a glimpse of the Sandhill Cranes as they stopped over during their migration.  She couldn’t wait to relay to her siblings that here in Florida they came right up to the car asking for a snack.

Alas, our time together quickly came to an end, and I was soon on the road again, beginning my final (at least for this trip) trek west.

* Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

** High-quality map available via the ‘Permeant Course link here:  http://www.floridaorienteering.org

*** You can learn more about orienteering here: https://orienteeringusa.org  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienteering

I had tossed and turned all night.

Not all night… I had struggled to fall asleep, part savoring every last moment and part stressing at my impending return to the real world.  At about two, I had snapped awake and, once I realized I would not nod off, had finished packing away all but the essentials I would need in the morning.  Then out came my book and the inevitable falling asleep with my glasses on.  I was awake again before dawn, snapping pics of the fields as the sun rose.

And then it was here: Sunday, my last day in Dordogne.

I got one last dip in the well: after breakfast we returned to Fajoles for a second helping of the marché we’d visited my first morning.  Diana was there with her watercolors of local birds and fields, next to huge bouquets of sunflowers, dahlias, and foxglove (among others) grown by another of her daughters, the proprietress of the local organic nursery*.  I considered spending my last Euros on walnut oil to take home, but in the end selected a small vial of (export-approved) propolis.  All too soon it was time to catch the train.

With the lunch Zia had composed for me the night before tucked safely in my backpack, we pointed the car towards Sarlat.  Along the way we stopped at Leclerc for some last minute items.  In the store’s foyer, tucked amongst photos of historic local structures was one of a relative newcomer: the original station building at the gare from which I was about to depart.  Our next stop was said station, the original building still intact.  We had a bit of time so we explored the station while my train warmed up at the end of the line a short distance away (literally, if a runaway train blew off the end of the tracks it would land in the Leclerc we’d just left).

All too soon the train pulled forward.  Zia walked me to my car, and a porter helped me heave my large bag onto the train.  We hugged, and hugged, and hugged some more; once on the train, I waved and waved and waved some more.  The doors closed, and tears stung my eyes as it began to move.

And then…

If you have spent any time driving with me (or on a certain Manhattan Harrier run**), you know I have an aversion to bridges.  It is an extension of my general aversion to heights, or, more precisely, this strange fear I have of being drawn over the edge.  On long bridges and high overpasses I can be found mildly hyperventilating as I stare at the bumper of the car ahead; on trail it is eyes closed holding someone’s hand.  As we pulled away from the station, I noticed the houses get shorter and shorter… no… we were on a bridge, that huge viaduct that loomed over a main roundabout in town… and there I was… taking photos of the intersection without a worry in the world.

Maybe, just maybe, I thought to myself, something had shifted during retreat after all.

* Photos of her gardens and bouquets are available here: https://www.facebook.com/LesFleursDuFourquet

** The Summit Harrier group holds an annual run on the second Monday of September that involves crossing first the Brooklyn then Manhattan Bridges.  The one and only time I did the full route, I almost broke the hand of the poor gent who escorted me.

It was my last full day in the French countryside, and I was determined to savor any moment of it.

The relaxation that flowed over me in Paris had continued throughout the week; but as my time grew short, a gnawing unease began to hover in the background.  On this, my last day, I woke filled with the bittersweet knowledge I would soon have to return to ‘real life’ in the States.  I was determined not to let this spoil my last hours in France.

After breakfast (the peaches and plums so sweet) headed to a town with a long history on a nearby hilltop.  Deeded to the Gourdon family in 961, after it survived (just barely) an encounter with Richard the Lionhearted it was rebuilt as a castrum, a fortified city with circular ramparts. While the fortress is gone and the ramparts reduced a low wall, you can still visit a 12th century water mill, a 13th century church, 14th, 15th, and 16th century homes, a 17th century cathedral (which remains surprisingly cool in the summer heat), as well as the architecture, traffic and hubbub of the modern age.

Everything seemed slightly more vivid than on previous days: a sprout of a succulent tucked in a honey-colored wall; the orange, yellow, and greens of paella simmering at the marché; the seemingly boneless cat sagging between a stone balcony and filigreed iron railing during our walk back to the car.  At the farm store I snapped a shot of their lambie, a stylized plastic rendering placed atop the meats cooler, who (like Lambie in our back yard) I had grown fond of during the week.  Back at the house I clung to the earthy flavor of the lettuce, creaminess of the cheese, salt of the smoked trout, and tang of the capers that made up our noontime meal.

After lunch Z and I retired to our respective rooms.  Though I was tired I found it hard to nap, not wanting to miss a moment; in the end, I got up and started to pack.  But what was this, in a carefully folded Lidl bag?  The chocolate kir I had bought some days before.  I carefully opened the paper and gold foil, broke off a piece and took a bite.  But what was this?  I had expected cherry creme, but there seemed to be some sort of liquid instead… What an amazing gift, I thought to myself, as the nip warmed my tongue, chocolate-covered kirsch.  Packing was quickly abandoned, and I returned to bed, savoring piece after piece as I listened to the sounds around me.

After a while Zia began to stir, and once her movement had localized in the kitchen, I joined her. Together we rummaged the frigo and composed a lunch for me to take on the train the following day.    Plan in mind, we then headed to the yard to water the flowers and vegetables wilting in the summer sun, and (for me) foraging plums fallen from the tree which, thankfully, had started to subside over the week.  It was a nice, lazy, afternoon, the thunk of the plums in my bucket peppered with exclamations of “OH!” as Zia found new heat damage in the garden.

As the afternoon grew long we retreated back to the house for aperitifs (both of us), coffee (for me), and conversation.  Once the sun was low, I slipped on my trainers, grabbed my camera, and went for one last evening exploration.  I turned right and headed up the hill, past the house with the barking dogs, another landscaped with fruit trees, to the main road.  From there I turned right and, after a short jog, turned back onto the country road that formed the back border of the surrounding pastures.  I snapped more pics along the way: budding thistles, bright colors in a neighbor’s garden, les vaches in the field bordered by a blackberry bramble, the tobacco sheds further down the lane.  The sun dipped below the horizon as I rounded the corner by the travelers’ caravans. At the marché that morning, Zia (ever the charmer) had been gifted a peach tart by the paella vendor.  We had set it aside, planning to share it as an after-walk snack, and that and the encroaching darkness quickened my pace.  I arrived back at the house to find Zia opening the shutters, windows, and doors to let in the slightly cooler evening air.

Perhaps now is a good time to mention the neighbor chat that would visit from time to time. I first sighted him sauntering through the garden my first afternoon, and by mid-week he had been leaving me gifts (a vole and a small bird) on the front porch.  (Okay, they were probably for Zia, but her first response was to shriek for me….)  You can see where this is going…. Zia led the way to the kitchen and before I could join her she let out a sharp “Out!  Out!”  The chat zipped past me and out the front door, and Z emerged from the kitchen holding the torn, stained, bag that had previously held the tart.

After a good laugh (okay, I thought it was funny), we called it a night and headed to bed.

More soon!

“Those caves, that’s where Roger’s father lived when he was with the Resistance.”

One of the things I love about spending time in this area of France is the local history.  In addition to living structures and towns that date to medieval times, the area was a hotbed of the Resistance during World War Two.  Drives with Zia, to marchés or cafés, were peppered with historical anecdotes: the source of a recent roof on an older building or scorch marks on a wall, or the significance of a hamlet we were passing through.  Today we were back at the source, re-filling out water jugs, and her enthusiasm was palpable.  I followed her pointed finger to rectangular cuts in the granite cliff as she explained this was where local resisters had plotted against (and sought refuge from) from the Nazis.  (In the waning days of the war, the Nazis repaid their efforts by rounding the locals in to churches and setting the church roofs on fire.)  This first-hand and familial knowledge of war, I finally understood, was why the French were reluctant to follow the US into Iraq, and why the locals had such sympathy for me during my first visit.

It had been during the summer of 1999, ten months after losing my husband.  I was lost, and the visit would provide respite from familiar reminders of my sorrows.  Zia’s friends would query whether I was married and her explanation (Il était dans la Air Force, il y avait un accident…) would be met with sincere condolences (Je suis trés désolé…).  She had told me that Roger’s father had been part of the local résistance, a group of men who had banded together, plotted and took action against the Nazis during the darkest hour of the war.  Many had been killed defending the area, as had their sons serving with the formal armée, and all had suffered under the harsh regime.  These stories had been passed along with reverence, with the families of those who gave their lives treated with the highest respect.  Because of my loss, this respect was extended to me.

This experience may explain the series of photos I did not realize I had taken until well after the fact:  the marker found in each village square that commemorates local sons killed in battle.  Le 1ene Guerre Mondiale, le 2eme Guerre Mondiale, Indochine, l’Algerie, Maroc-Tunisie, they were all there, in bold letters, along with the names and ages of les enfants qui morts pour la France.  Each year the names are read aloud during Remembrance Day ceremonies.  It is a refreshing contrast to the US, where most citizens seem to have forgotten we are in our 16th year of active war (with no end in sight).

I gazed up at the cuts as we filled our bottles, careful to not become so distracted I dropped one on the stones below.  Soon they were full, and we were back in our little white car, zipping across the French countryside to our next adventure.

The tuba set the tone.

We had spent the morning in Souillac, a medieval mill town with quirky modern touches.  After picking up some cerices (cherries), we hiked up a hill to Le Book Store where I picked up some new notebooks and refills for my Parker pen.  (I love Claire Fontaine notebooks; they are slightly oversize and have options with graph lines rather than rows.)  On the way home we passed through the town of Le Roc and its pastures of sunflowers and hillside of sculptured shrubs.  After a light lunch we napped and, as the sun grew low… it was time for fête!

It is tradition in French farming towns for the village to take a long weekend during the mid-summer to come together and celebrate.  The adverts for this annual village festival had been in shop windows and on fence poles since I’d arrived: black letters over fluorescent background announcing Fête (in our small town) 3, 4, 5 Julliet (July). Tonight, the first night, would be a community dinner (paella) spritzed with soft drinks (for the little ones) and local wines (for the adults). Early evening found us parking the Peugeot along an alley by the church, a spot carefully selected to provide easy exit during or following the festivities.

The grass in the park behind the school had been cut short earlier in the week and the groomed field was now filled with long, white party tents.  Two contained rows of tables and folding chairs, and the third housed the (at this hour the more popular) refreshment stand.  Zia and I claimed some seats in one of the tents, then set out to mingle.  She got some wine, and I got some water; she fell in to conversation with friends (in French) and I began to explore the park.  I met up with Diana (the artist from Fajoles market mentioned in Part Deux) at a bench by the swings and we began chatting (in English) as well.  It turns out this mild-mannered British grandmother was a fascinating woman: her husband, an engineer and architect, had commissions all over the world and she had followed (rather than stay home as is the British tradition) raising and educating her children in countries across Africa.  Soon we were joined by her daughter (born in Tanzania) and her three children. Diana and her daughter caught up on recent events while the three youngsters took turns on the swings and slide.  After a bit the children’s attention turned to the four-horse merry-go-round and arcade games set up for the occasion nearby, and I took the opportunity to explore.

The hamlet was smaller than I expected: the école (school), the shuttered storefront of a former boulangerie; and further down (past some homes), two cafés and the church.  I snapped some pics: the war memorial, a fence ornament, overgrown flowers in the yard of the former rectory. I passed some children playing cops and robbers and the ornamented van belonging to local anarchists.  My circle complete, I was back at the tents.

By this time the local band, an all-ages group of horns, guitars, and woodwinds, had begun it’s first set: local folk songs (and the occasional 80’s dance hit) played with enthusiasm on a stage near the head of the park.  Zia was seated with Diana and her family; the children were deep in rounds of the ‘would you rather’ decision game with their father while the ladies talked the ex-pat life.  They had saved me a seat so I joined them, switching between girl talk and fantastical scenarios.  The tent was filled with voices: cheerful, earnest, laughing, French with the occasional English or Catalan and the occasional jovial boom boom of the tuba.

Time passed, courses came in waves: bowls of nuts; rolls; a salad of fresh lettuce, tomatoes sweet from the vine, and sliced and salted cukes with a deep, earthy flavor; and then the main, rice with veg richly flavored with local herbs, garnished with a trio of prawns.

We ate, we drank, we smoked (okay, not me on that last one); the sun set, the sky darkened, and the stars emerged.  The band began their second set, folks young and old filed out and began to dance.  Children played off to the side: down by the slides, tag at the far end of the park, or napped curled on pairs of chairs.  I grew sleepy, and it turns out Zia did too.  We were soon back at the allée by the church, in the Peugeot, and on our way back to the abode, the warm air mixed with warm memories.

Imagine a world without traffic noise, without the hum of aircraft passing overhead, without the constant interruption of leaf blowers, passing conversations, or ear bud music.

This is the French countryside, and I found it unsettling.

I would startle awake, the quiet of those first few nights as unfamiliar as a sudden threatening noise.  I would lie in bed and listen to the crickets and frogs as my breath and heart rate slowly returned to normal as I became acquainted to the absence of usual sounds.  Sometimes I would read to fill the new space, but the silence would quickly overwhelm me once I put the book down.  More often than not I would fall asleep to the glow of my bedside light, glasses on, book in hand.

Waking from naps in the afternoon was easier.  There would be some sort of puttering outside: water rushing through the hose outside my window, Zia chatting with the plants, the birds bickering over fruit in the trees. These became my signal to rise and re-join the living; and, after checking that my hair was not in too much disarray, I would head outside to help.  My job quickly became the desiccated bounty shed from the Japanese Plum near the driveway.  After the birds’ morning feast, and lunchtime feast, and afternoon feast plums were everywhere: on the porch, mixed with the gravel of the driveway and (quelle horreur!) on the shiny white Peugout parked in the shade of the branches.  I would pluck the sticky fruit from the ground one by one and plunk them in to a green plastic pail; every hundred or so I would add my collection to the compost pile and begin again.

Late morning silence was my favorite.  I would rest in the shade of the verandah fully intending to read, only to be distracted by wind teasing  leaves, the hum of a vibrating chain link fence, or a stray baaah from the sheep.  The silence was as much smell as anything: lavender teased by a warm wind, roses basking in the sun, fresh cut hay, and, of course, the dinner to come.  As I sat, I came to appreciate this silence as much or more than the harsh lack of sound I’d experienced in monastery.

As the week progressed, the heat wave strengthened, and the silence began to shift.  Wednesday night the surprise was not silence but the purr of tractors in the field next door, punctuated with the shouts of men.  I went to the window to check whether someone was hurt; as my eyes and ears adapted to the dark I realized they were baling hay, augmenting the near full moon with extra lamps to avoid the daytime sun. The next night the tractors were joined by hammering sounds from the other direction and further away.

Friday morning brought the marché in Souillac, a town some twenty kilometers to the northeast.  Our quest today: cherries at the peak of season, sold by a gentleman from his table set in the shade of the local Abbaye.  But what was this, in our small town’s public park?  Rows of large white tents, a truck filled with folding tables and another folding chairs, and in the back by the swings, a family assembling a small merry-go-round.  That’s right, tonight was the first night of fête!  I’d admired the bright fliers all week, and had spent part of my evening walks decoding the ones posted on fence posts during… how could I let this slip my mind?

I was in for a real treat!  More on that soon.

Name an August 2003 weather disaster that killed thousands.  Most Americans would fish for an answer; ask a Frenchman (or woman) and they will think heat.

Summers in France, at least until then, were normally mild, with hot days sandwiched between cool nights that allowed some relief.  Building construction reflects this historic norm; homes tend to be made of stone, which reflects heat rather than absorbs it, and surrounded with trees whose shade adds an extra buffer. This keeps homes cool, and as a result most do not have air conditioning.

Weather over most of Europe is the result of interaction between the clockwise rotation of the Azores High and the counterclockwise rotation of the Icelandic Low*.  During the summer the Low weakens and splits in two, with one area centered between Greenland and Canada and the other along the west shores of Iceland, while the High shifts west from the Azores to Bermuda.  This creates an oscillating wave of air (known as the The North Atlantic Oscillation) that brings alternating masses of warm, dry and cooler, wetter air to Western Europe between May and September.  But in 2003, the Azores High got frisky and moved north towards Scandinavia.  This blocked cool air from moving south and led to higher surface temperatures in the Mediterranean.  In early August a high pressure system moved north from Africa and stalled over France; the clockwise rotation pumped this excess surface heat northward.  Roadway surfaces melted and rail lines bucked; river levels fell, exposing Army tanks and munitions that had been submerged since World War 2; the heat even forced two nuclear plants in Germany to close when access to river water needed for cooling became unreliable.  The human toll was no less dramatic: a combination of the heat, building construction, and social factors resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 persons across the EU, 14,000 of them in France.

And now, twelve years later, a similar slow-moving high was inching north from the Sahara.

Following the 2003 heat wave, the World Meteorological Organization (The UN World Health Organization’s weather office) urged countries to develop heatwave emergency plans.  Once home, we switched on the radio (okay, France 24 through an IPad) and learned this infrastructure had been activated.  Warnings were pronounced at regular intervals, it was announced cooling stations were opened (and their locations provided), families and friends were encouraged to look in on the less mobile, and train and bus schedules were curtailed (to avoid disruptions due to encounters with damaged surfaces).  The night before, it was reported, over a million customers had lost power as a result of fires (blamed on malfunctions due to load) at the stations serving them, and today was expected to reach record highs. Out here in the countryside, farmers (ever attuned to the weather around them) had already shifted their work from mid-day to early morning and evening hours.  Animals hunkered in the shade, and humans made sure windows were shuttered to prevent direct sunlight from reaching interior rooms.

We took our noon meal (smoked trout and fromage with greens, we had given up on the stove days ago) on the veranda.  The trees around us were heavy with heat, branches and leaves drooping.  The plants that bordered the lawn seemed in retreat, huddled; flowers closed, stems loose, doing their best to escape the stress of the sun.  Or at least that’s what I imagined; it was exhaustingly hot to me, but I’d been living in an oceanic climate for the last 10 years, with one summer that barely touched the eighties, what did I know about hot at this point?

Just then, just when I was wondering whether it was all in my head, a magpie alighted upon a walnut tree by the road, opened its beak wide, and started to pant.  Yup, it was a scorcher.

You know what happens next: it was time for my nap.

More soon!

* Graphic of the Azores High and Icelandic Low (in the ‘Storm tracks and the NAO section) http://www.air-worldwide.com/Publications/AIR-Currents/2012/A-Windy-Winter-Season/

Hippy Dippy Weatherman on a similar phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HpB5CGfLQ