Cafeteria Alfresco

Posted on August 11, 2023 by Fox & Maus

Finding a place to be in the French countryside has been a lot of work and even more luck. When we started seriously looking, we decided that making a list was an important, adult-like step so we started brainstorming and scribbling. Over many weekend mornings with coffee in hand, we scooched up on our favorite couch overlooking our front yard and whispered what we thought would be key to the perfect French hideaway while our children slept on, buried under heavy quilts in various bedrooms. It was a worthy project and we figured out what we reckoned were some important components. Things immediately floated to the top of the list, like having water security and access to it seemed obvious while some were less important and more “wants” rather than “needs”. A patisserie right around the corner would be lovely, but hardly critical and potentially devastating to my pant size. Some dreams should probably remain just that. Over time, the list grew and shrank and changed in priorities as we thought things through. Obvious lines like cost stayed fixed but other things changed as we mentally moved around the back roads of France. 

A difficult part with all of this is that it’s _all_ mental. You can imagine what you’d like but the world doesn’t bend to your imagination unless you’re a billionaire. It’s really more about finding the spot where the puzzle piece fits best, not where it fits perfectly, because it won’t. There’s some chaos to consider, and for some, that’s absolutely terrifying. For me, it’s the sprinkles on the bagel of life. It’s what makes it more than just a bread doughnut. 

“Discovery” is a far nicer way than saying “unknown” and it’s deeply important to both my wife and to me. It might be for our teenage kids too, but it’s tricky to tell, their personality partly masked by the weight of those teen years. Still, we feel that it must be there somewhere  judging on how eagerly they go looking for local cats to pet when the moment dinner is over. 

Dinner is something we hadn’t really thought about when making up our list but it has become a pretty big part of the experience here for us all. Specifically, Wednesday dinner. We had bought our house sight unseen except for some beautiful photos made by the seller and some very janky videos made by the estate agent. It’s hard to wrap your head around what a space really looks like until you can physically stand there and understand how big or small a room actually is. Photos will definitely beat-out descriptions when it comes to a real estate listing, but it can’t rival being there. So, once papers had been signed and money transferred, we came and looked at what we had done. We couldn’t move in yet, for the wheels of legalities move slowly in France, but we could come and see. We had rolled the dice and put a big chunk of our future on the real estate roulette wheel. Like I said… absolutely terrifying.

What we found out was that we were very fortunate in how the dice landed. I won’t actually say “lucky” because there had been a tremendous quantity of work that we had put into research first, but Fortune definitely smiled on us when it came to the little things that actually mean so much. Our house wasn’t next to a neighbor who was irritable and tricky. We didn’t wind up next to the farmyard where the tractor is left to idle during breaks. There wasn’t a streetlamp that shone into the bedroom window. All small stuff but items that can add up to degrading an experience and all items that are tricky to know until you actually go there and experience it. Another added piece of fortune was the seller himself. One rarely puts “delightful seller” on the list when looking for a new property to buy, but delightful he was and it quickly became apparent that our relationship with him and his wife was going to be more than transactionary and last longer than it took to just get everything signed and keys passed over. When we met just him on that first, blisteringly hot, Summer day, we all did a lot of smiling and nodding from behind N95 masks. He spoke limited English, the estate agent wandered around distractedly, I spoke nearly no French and my mulit-lingual wife, though non-contagious at this point, was still recovering from covid that had really laid her low. Communication with them was tricky, but after finally viewing the house and being shown various systems by the seller, we did understand that we were invited to the village to have dinner, which sounded lovely, but odd. 

Most villages of a certain size will have market days. Where our house is doesn’t even rate as a village, but rather, a hamlet. Made up of only a handful of houses, sparsely lived in, there would never be a good enough reason to have a market here, so we go to our anchor village where market day is on Friday. This is actually pretty handy considering how much is closed on Sunday. It’s a good chance to load up. We like to go and look at what is being offered at the various trucks and stands and stock up on the necessities of life such as rotisserie chicken, local honey, some locally grown produce or a fancy, new hat. There’s even a mattress seller there, his display pieces arranged like an ambitious bedroom set for eight, while he sits on the edge of one, typing away on his mobile like a man who just woke up in some strange village square and is trying to figure out what happened. All of this is set up in the heart of a medieval village under the ubiquitous plane trees with their camouflage like bark. But as this was Wednesday and not Friday, the space has other uses just then. 

We arrived that evening not knowing quite what to expect, but whatever we thought, it wasn’t what we found. The large, open spot under the leaves that had been reserved for market day and parking spots the rest of the week had been transformed with row after row of tightly packed, long, cafeteria style tables, filled to capacity with happy locals. They were there as friends and as families, old and young. Around the edges of the seating roamed older men and women looking for all the world like retired school teachers who had somehow pulled extra lunch duty and needed to keep an eye on the very congenial crowd. In their arms they held stacks of paper placemats that if you made eye contact with them, they’d hand to you to take and mark your dining spot with while you scurried off to find your choice of dinner. 

That was the next step. There is no table service here. All along the periphery of all this noisy, laughing and eating enjoyment are the multitude of vendors selling everything you need to make a delicious meal, with a few special dishes spot-lit as local favorites. The family who was selling us our house was there, all smiles and anticipation and had saved us seats with their regular crew. As we looked around and partook of the food and conversation as best we could, we were warmed by more than just the good, homespun food but also the whole picture of where we were and what was happening that night. Those who had heard about the new American family who have just bought a house nearby watched us with unguarded anticipation as we tried the farçous, a sort of swiss chard pancake fried in oil and the aligot (cheese and mashed potato blended until smooth), both regional staples. The aligot was just as you’d expect potato and cheese to taste. It would stick to your ribs and keep you going. It was farmer’s food and did its job well. The farçous was something else. Served piping hot in a foil wrapped stack like pancakes, they were handed around and deeply enjoyed by all, ourselves included. They were warm and savory, peppery and fried and disappeared quickly while a few of our new friends got up from their seats to wait in line and replenish the pile. On that first night, no one would let us buy anything. We shared wine and food and what conversation we could while the accordion player who had set up at the feet of the ubiquitous war memorial played a medley of old French favorites such as the beloved “La Vie en rose” and other less expected songs such as “The Bare Necessities” from Disney’s The Jungle Book as well as Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi. An eclectic mix that somehow works. Later on, this chaotic playlist would be a major inducement in getting our teenagers to join us in the craziness. Though neither enjoy loud crowds, they both enjoy the moment when the accordion fires up the first few lines of a new song and the two of them stare at each other over a pile of green pancakes, smirking as they attempt to figure out what the latest tune is.

Oh, My, GOD! It’s “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor!

What we had stumbled into was a vibrant and welcoming region who wanted to make sure we noticed just that. We were invited in, attempted to communicate and even succeeded from time to time, all while being fed by the village and region. What this brings to the experience could never be accurately included in a real estate listing. This needs to be lived. 

Every Summer Wednesday, the square is set up for this communal meal and the people selling gaufrettes, sausage, aligot, escargot, farçous, local honey, local beer, local wine, local jam, local everything will be there and at your service. We save room for a ball or two of gelato as we leave the table, saying “bon soir” to friends and neighbors and then wander the quiet streets of the village with our cones as we look for the well fed communally owned cats that wander about looking for a pat and rub or a bit of a treat that you might have on hand. The river flows past the town as it has for more centuries than we could know and the distant sound of accordion music floats on the breeze. It’s magical and fleeting. 

Come Autumn, the village meals will end as the chilly weather takes hold, but we will be long gone far before that happens. Our time here is limited and even though we have our cottage on the river to enjoy all this from, we still need to work and that takes place back in the United States. Being teachers, six weeks is what we can manage and though that sounds like a dream for most workers back in the States, it seems like a tease once you really get to love this patch of France. We will close up our house, drain the pipes and be gone for the long, cold winter. The long tables put away and the accordion player will move inside the Cafe L’Independance to keep his fingers from freezing. We will just have to wait to enjoy all this again, dreaming of unexpected tunes and green pancakes with friends under a canopy of leaves and tradition.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Sound Stage

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Fox & Maus

There is a lot of silence in France, or at least the France I prefer to travel. Perhaps “silence” isn’t quite the correct word. That has more of the feel of loneliness or desertion to me. It’s more about the long pauses, I suppose. That, and creating a stage to let some sounds shine in the spotlight. 

Background noise is with most of us most of the time and generally speaking, we don’t even notice it until there’s a power outage or something remarkable happens that makes a fundamental change in our environment. Even on the little island we live on in Maine, the thrum of ambient sound never really leaves us. If you stop and listen, even in the island’s center, the sounds of traffic from the city across miles of bay can be heard, their horns and sirens, faint on a whispering breeze, but undeniably there. Then there are the jets blasting over every few minutes, loud enough to pause conversation while we wait patiently to finish our pithy reply to the comments at hand. 

I’m not complaining about any of that, though. I think to do so ignores some pretty egregious hypocrisy. The city sounds on the horizon mean easy access to the trappings of civilization that drew us here in the first place. My wife’s commute to work might start with a ferry voyage to the mainland, but it ends with her climbing into a car and driving on the highway, and highways are noisy as hell. Those planes that fly over our house, way out on a point of land in the North Atlantic, carry people and last time I checked, we’re people too. In fact, if we can figure out a way to use our local airport rather than driving to Boston, we leap at the chance. Why wouldn’t you? This is where we wanted to live… but the noise does get old from time to time. France has the noise of life too, to be sure, but somehow it feels different. There is traffic and there are (happily) more trains to ride and it all contributes to the noise. There are trucks on rural roads and airports both international and regional, but the constancy of the sound seems to be less for some reason. For me, there are noticeable breaks that I just don’t really encounter or maybe notice back in the US and those breaks sort of showcase sounds unlike I’m used to.

For starters, there’s a donkey. Somewhere on the other side of the Lot River, not too far from our house lives one of the more adorably dorky animals that ever existed. We know that it’s there because we can hear it from time to time, and we know it’s a donkey because if you’ve never heard a donkey before, you will most definitely never forget what one sounds like once you have. Horses can be quite loud with a well timed “neigh!” and you can hear them just fine at a pretty decent distance, but donkeys do not neigh, they “bray” and a “neigh” and a “bray” have about as much in common as a red bell pepper and a scotch bonnet. If there is a lyrical cascade to a horse’s whinny, a donkey counters that with what resembles the vocalization of a high speed car accident, all wrending metal and spiraling debris. 

Sounds delightful, right? Actually, it cracks us up every time. 

The good news is that these ridiculous and noisy critters, all giant ears and goofy smiles, are far enough away that their calls fit into the “funny” column rather than the “make it stop” category, and for that, we know we are fortunate. As we bought our house pretty much sight unseen, it could have been so very much worse. On an outing to the other side of the Lot yesterday, we finally laid eyes on what we had previously only heard and got a chance to chat with the two fluffy nerds. As it turns out, they live in a pasture just above a local abbey church, a beautiful view of the village cemetery and the green fields leading to the water’s edge not far away. It’s a pretty idyllic place to be a donkey and they seemed pretty happy with the set up, and I can easily see why. They don’t bray all the time or even often, but rather seem to wait for their noisy, noisy turn in the spotlight.

I suppose the sound here is more about the taking of turns. Background sound follows us everywhere, some man made and some natural, but this little corner of France seems to do a lovely job of compartmentalizing. Even the wind seems to wait patiently and the only real constant I can hear from the house is the jumbling of watery ripples as they pass over the rounded stones in the river. Sure, the occasional car or farm vehicle passes the house, but it’s a sudden “whoosh” and then we’re just back to the river. Well, almost. 

As I sit in my favorite window each morning overlooking the river I have fallen hopelessly in love with, I wait for another sound which I anticipate with almost as much joy as the final sputters of the coffee machine. Though I am nearly always the first one awake in the house, when I am here at the River Cottage, I am rarely alone. I have a morning companion who is perfect for sharing the quiet of a French morning with. He shows up nearly every day around eight and is named Haaron. Ok. We actually named him that, and his full name is Haaron the Heron. He’s French you see, so we figure that the first “H” is silent, just like he nearly is. Haaron joins me innocuously as I try to write in the freshness of a new day and rarely squawks. Instead, I can hear the pumping of large, slate grey wings as he approaches to land in the shallows and hunt for his fishy breakfast. Sometimes he makes a bit of racket if another heron shows up to poach his territory, but generally speaking it’s the rapid “whump, whump” of big wings coming in for a landing that tips me off of his arrival. That, or the sporadic quacking from the ducks who live nearby, letting everyone know that the big guy is back in town. It very quickly all goes back to quiet though. 

“But, I hear you say, “that’s what the countryside is like! You get into a city and it’s right back to the noise you’re used to!” And that’s true, but only sorta. Even when we visit the bustling, urban centers, there’s a cadence to the quiet. Last week, we were in the seaside city of Cassis and though this was once the back of beyond and no doubt, ages ago, just a sleepy fishing village, those days are far behind it. Now, Cassis marks the start of the Côte d’Azur and it is anything but sleepy. Tourist shops and restaurants crowd the waterfront while hoards of holidaymakers wander cluelessly through the streets looking for their hotel or apartment rental. I cast no stones here. I was just as lost when we arrived and it all seemed fairly overwhelming. The interesting thing though is that this city does most definitely sleep still. Waking up in the morning before most decent vacationers, I walked to our balcony and was stunned by the silence. It might not have been dead quiet, but even by eight o’clock, things were still very, very quiet out there. Most cities I’m familiar with of this size would have been in high gear and on their third coffee by now, but not Cassis. The entire population, civil servants included, seemed to be enjoying the freshness of a new day full of brilliant blue water and even more brilliant blue skies. They take it slow and the only real sound is of the beating of pigeon wings and their absolutely ridiculous, cartoon-like squeaking. (Seriously. If you have never heard a European pigeon, you are in for a coffee snarfling laugh when you do. Utterly hilarious.) By nine or ten, the town is alive and the tourists and locals are buzzing about on the itinerary of the day, but the thing is, the quiet was there too, and you can notice it. 

In the France I love to travel, there is a pattern of sounds. Rather than the layering of one thing over another, each moment seems to have its showcase. Mornings feel sacred and the two hours at lunch are still observed by most. Cafés fill up and the clank of dishes and glasses replace the sounds of feet crunching on gravel or shopping or cars whipping past. In the countryside, the after lunch period seems to be made for napping, at least while your food digests a bit. By the dinner hour, roads empty again and if you walk through a village, hamlet, town or city, you can hear families sitting down to talk and enjoy something delicious. There’s a rhythm to the sounds and I deeply enjoy it. It keeps me mindful not to disrupt things with noisy activities until it’s appropriate and it makes it better for everyone in earshot, if a bit confining for those who want to partake of noisy activities. Still, there’s time for that too… if you wait. It might not be enough time to get it all done today, but hey, there’s always tomorrow and that works out just fine. Take your time and do it properly. 

The morning is ending and Haaron the Heron has moved on to his late morning patch of river. Cars are starting to come by more often and one of the donkeys across the river just brayed. The day is awake at last, though still mighty calm. People will get industrious soon and traffic will pick up, but by lunch time, it will quiet down again and evening will be lovely. I can hear the “ca-clunk” of the rental kayaks hitting the rock of the shallows and the chatty hikers will pass our door within the hour. It’s a lovely pattern of sounds and one I will miss once we leave. It is good to know that it will be waiting for us here again next summer. 

Filed under: Aveyron, Cantal, Europe, france, new day, River Cottage, Travel, Writing | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Old Ways

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Fox & Maus

I am absolutely right in the heart of Gen X and partly because of that, I am a technology person. My generation grew up on emerging digital technology and some of us, like me, took things even farther. My generation was the first to potentially have a home computer, though by today’s standards, calling it cutting edge technology seems pretty quaint. It was big and bulky, had a black and green (rather than black and white) monitor, took either cassette tapes or 5.25 inch floppy disks to save work on and came in beige, and beige alone. To be fair, it was the late 70’s and early 80’s so by law, all household durable goods needed to come in beige, harvest gold, avocado green or that weird orangy-red. In retrospect, having a computer in the orange color would have been awesome. Regardless, we grew up on computers and other digital conveniences. Records and tapes gave way to CD’s. Our trusted old film camera got shoved into the backs of cupboards and closets while we blasted away with digital replacements. We even ditched our land lines, that all important messenger, in favor of just using our cell phones. To so much of the younger generations of Gen Y and Millennials, the way we and the Boomers grew up might as well be Medieval times. They know that we did stuff, but don’t know how we did stuff. And I’ll hesitate here to add that this is not their fault! It is simply the world they grew up in! Why would you learn how to hill start a manual transmission if not only is your car fuel injected but also every car you’ve ever been in was an automatic? They are also used to things just working pretty much right out of the box and for there to be a specialized doodad that does the thing they need. When it breaks, toss it and get a new one. What else are you going to do? 

This is the world I know now, and don’t get me wrong, I love technology and what it can do for me. It’s just that sometimes, I forget that you don’t need it and that goes for cell phones or premanufactured bits and pieces of life. For our summer here in the backwoods of France, I had packed for everything. The weight of high tech gadgetry easily would outweigh a well fed three year old but to cut myself some slack, I was packing for the perceived electronic needs of four, plus outfitting a house. I was ready, or so I thought. 

The first to die way my laptop. It’s elderly and I knew it was far from perfect, but I had expected to at least be able to write on it and hadn’t anticipated the video just giving up the ghost and reducing it to paperweight status. Drat. The next to go was my son’s laptop. This time it was the operating system that became corrupted and thus putting an end to his ability to work on his digital music scoring. We could try to reinstall the OS, but that requires internet. Luckily, we had just had a brand new fiber optic modem and router installed about three days after arriving!!… and that lasted two more before fritzing out. It’s been on and off ever since, so the first question asked by my spouse and children each morning is, “Do we have internet right now?” Our provider loaned us a cellular system to use while they work out the problem… but that doesn’t function either. We have all resorted to other ways of doing things. Older ways. 

Beyond the computers all being aggravating and forcing us to draw or read, I’ve had to reach into my personal wayback machine of a brain for other skills as well. Our house is in good shape, but like all houses that have stood for over one hundred years, it needs things done. My wife and I are used to this sort of living, having twice done this before with other houses,  but back in the US, I had an Ace to play that is sadly missing here in our French house. Tools. I need French tools. And many of the powered variety. Some tools I actually brought. Old fashioned hand tools, many of nostalgic, family provenance were stuffed in luggage to be flown far away from their old dusty pegs in the basement to be put on new dusty pegs here in France. A screwdriver is a screwdriver, after all. Power tools for here are trickier, however. Household electricity in Europe is not only a higher voltage than in the US, but also runs at a different frequency. Essentially, it talks twice as fast to the motor and in a different language. This means that if your imported powertool connects to the French powergrid, it’s going to overload and fry, much like me after a long outing with French friends. The difference being that I can’t soak it in wine to make it feel better. Pretty much anything with a motor intended for the US power grid is a no-go. You need EU designed tools and like anything of good quality, power tools are pricey. 

Not unsurprisingly, our budget for decking out our new house with all the trappings of life got blown out and exceeded in record time, so now it’s time to make do. If I needed to make a 45º cut on a board at home, I’d go to the chopsaw and zip it out in two seconds. I don’t have a chopsaw here because the cheap ones aren’t that cheap and you wouldn’t want a cheap one anyway. A hard lesson I have learned a few times now is that in the end, cheap tools will cost you more than good ones, but in this case, the good ones are way too costly for now. I’d check just how costly they are and give you a number, but the internet just went out again, so I can’t. We’ll put it down as “too much for the present.” This means I get to take a dose of my own medicine.

Being of that generation who straddled the two worlds of analog and digital, I learned how to do things by hand and with tools older than my parents. Gen X didn’t have to use them for long. Keyless drill chucks and powerful batteries were just around the corner for us to use, but we did learn on the old, rusty, dusty, iron tools of yore and though not terribly efficient, I do know what to do with them. Now to go looking in dusty, dark corners.

Did I mention I have a barn? 

I have a BARN!

The River Cottage’s barn (or grange, here in France) was mercifully dealt with before we received the keys to the place and largely cleared of the decades of debris that a barn inevitably accumulates… but not all of it. As much as looking at the mess that was there during the showing of the property made my fingers tingle with the anticipation of discovery, I know how lucky we are that we didn’t have to deal with the mountains of half or wholly forgotten things that dwelt there under layers of spider webs and bat poop. Nope! Though the boxes were mostly gone, they were not entirely! As I have stated to my young classroom students far too many times, you don’t have to chop down a tree with an ax, but you should know how to. You might need that skill. In one of the few boxes left behind in the barn sat my solutions. Heavily rusted with handles holed by woodworm, a nice clutch of hand tools. And so, powered by necessity and perhaps too much nostalgic pride, I use the miter box I found or take a file to an ancient auger bit to knock the rust off and put an edge back on its tip or assessing the usability of some block planes. It brings me back to memories of fiddling about in my parent’s basement, not making anything in particular but feeling industrious just by making sawdust and wood shavings.

It’s a heck of a lot slower working this way, for sure, but it’s also a lot quieter and allows me to hear the river rolling by out my front door rather than the scream of motorized blades flying. Even the bat that lives in my grange and makes a mess on our newly painted floor sticks around and sleeps while I line things up and saw rhythmically back and forth and humming to myself. It’s not a bad way to be. Ultimately, I’ll need to suck it up and buy some noisy machines for the barn. There are a multitude of things we want to do to our property and three buildings that need doing. Couple that with the relatively short amount of time that we have here each summer and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that doing the work like this isn’t going to check things off the list anywhere near fast enough. So perhaps next year that means a table saw and a chop saw. I’ll probably need a drill press or a joiner too and a big hammer drill and meter long masonry bits as well. Oh, and a tile saw. Obviously. Ughh… I can hear next year’s wallet screaming already. 

For now though, I’m happy to ignore my broken or frustrating computer technology and write on my tiny phone screen. I’ll drink my coffee and then head to the barn to grab a screwdriver to fix the window shutter that needs bracing and cut the new support brace with my lightly rusting hand saw. I can hear the birds and the running river across the road and don’t have to look for ear protection before starting the job. I do actually have a dead tree that I need to bring down before too long and a chainsaw would be lovely for that, but I don’t actually need one if I can’t find one. I know how to drop it with the tools in the barn and I’ll tell you this, though it looks like the old bow saw I found and have in mind hasn’t moved off its peg in about a decade or more, I know that unlike my chainsaw back in Maine, this one will start on the first pull. 

I’ll just set out a few aspirin to take after I’m done.  

Filed under: 70's, Antiques, building, Do It Your Self, Europe, france, home, Nostalgia, Repair, River Cottage | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Time

Posted on July 23, 2023 by Fox & Maus

I am not an adventurous person. At least, I don’t think I am. I’m actually pretty cautious and like to think out all the angles before making a move. There are some who might find that statement pretty funny considering where I sit as I write this. A stone farmhouse in the French countryside is definitely a perch out of the ordinary for most folks who don’t already live in the French countryside.

 Perhaps “adventurous” isn’t the right word. I could probably do some digging and find some perfect, nineteenth century way of encapsulating what I feel I am, but I associate “adventurous” with “dangerous” or “risky”. Sort of somehow… willfully being an idiot. Risk and danger are with us always and I don’t think avoiding it at all costs is healthy either. Some might see it as a balance of risk vs safety, but I see it as more complex than that. In my case anyway, it’s a complex cocktail with lots of ingredients including dreams, reality and fear. You need to add in the fear, but probably not the way you are thinking. 

Fear doesn’t have to be just an anchor. It can also sort of be the baking soda in life and it’s a powerful motivator once you notice it. I did and it scared me right down to my core. We’re talking existential levels of dread here. What a connoisseur might refer to as The Good Stuff. It didn’t hit all at once but as I grew up, smacking me around like incoming waves on a beach when you wander out a little too far in the surf. That seventh wave will getcha’ though. Man…

The beginnings of all of this probably start with childhood imaginings and the dangers of dreaming big. One minute you’re working out the “details” of how to build the ultimate flying saucer launch facility under the tool shed out back and the next, you’re wondering what you can do to make your resume stand out for that beige colored job you don’t actually want but are still applying for. One minute it’s hunting for snakes by the wood pile and then suddenly it’s hunting for dress socks at 6:00 AM. It’s the duality that blows me away. It happens slowly enough that you don’t really notice it changing but then you spin around and what the hell just happened?! I wanted garter snakes not gartered socks!

I’m a planner by nature, or at least I overthink like hell and call it planning. Either way, my Seventh Wave of fear hit me when I was still in college while I was officially expanding my mind with Academia and unofficially expanding it with personal growth and way too much Pink Floyd. Some folk might assume that this probably included certain enhancing herbal substances, and I make no judgment on those who partake, but I tell you sincerely, a mix of a vivid imagination and overthinking is one hell of a drug and eclipses the need for any other. Paying attention to the lyrics were enough to thoroughly spook me.

The album was, naturally, Dark Side of the Moon. 

The song: Time.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain

You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

I can’t adequately express to you the weapons grade, pants wetting, terror that song put in me. Was that going to be me? Was I going to just sort of move forward until I was too old to build that UFO base in the backyard? My brain tends to works a little… differently than most and I continuously have more amazing ideas than I could ever have time to do them. Life is full of choices and I needed to start picking what to do to build a life I found fulfilling. 

Along with a host of other choices I’ve made over the years, this house nestled in a crinkle of French countryside is definitely part of that. More than just a place to enjoy, it keeps us off balance as well, which I view as a sort of existential exercise. Everything is harder to do here either because we are unfamiliar with the correct way of doing things in a new environment or because we just don’t have the language down yet (though my wife is way out ahead of me in that regard). Because we need to constantly work at understanding and learning, it think it helps keep us from becoming curmudgeons. We’re new here and don’t see the things or people who are gone or how things have changed. For us, it’s all new and exciting and for me, anyway, helps me approach life with a bit of that “wonder in the eye” that young children have in abundance. It’s a way to regain some of that awe, and though I’m not so interested in building a flying saucer base any more, I am interested in rehabbing our barn so that we can have that art studio space that we’ve always wanted but never had space for, time-wise or square foot-wise.

Fear needs to work hand in hand with dreams or I think those dreams are unlikely to be realized. Every once in a while it just sort of happens and sweeps you along with the rush, but it seems to me that it’s the pushing yourself to do the frightening thing in the hopes of a payoff that allows for the “amazing” or at least the “fulfilling” to happen. It’s going on that hiking trip to sleep in the spooky, ink black woods so you can see the dawn over the mountains or starting a project bigger than you ever have before to create something unprecedented. It’s the step of taking what’s a dream and making it real, even when it doesn’t seem possible. One step. Then another. Then another. Is your dream to see someplace far away? Is it to create something beautiful with your own hands? To explore places you’ve never seen or push your abilities (rare or homespun) to higher and higher achievement? Maybe it’s to… oh, I don’t know… buy a house in France and fix it up! Crazy, huh? 

The wild part is that you can do these things, but you have to start.

When I tell people that we bought a house down by a river and overlooked by pastures and castles, I usually get a lot of questions. The first one is “why?” but followed closely with “how?” There honestly seems to be a lot of interest from both friends and acquaintances about the way this can be done and the possibilities that exist. I watch the preconceived notions and supposed roadblocks melt away as I explain how we did it until there is nothing left to stop them but their own reluctance and that’s what needs measuring. In the end it really comes down to the adventure you want versus the fear, but not the fear OF the thing, but rather the fear of NOT doing the thing. You’re already here and time only goes in one direction, so what do you need to do to feel like you’ve spent it well?

Buying this place that we have named The River Cottage has brought a great deal of stress and work into our lives. We’ve just started on this long road and the continuing responsibility will weigh on us for sure, but I wouldn’t have passed it up for the world. The work will definitely wear on me with the passing of years but it also keeps me young and my eyes up and looking ahead. It’s both a culmination of dreams and what I hope is a good path to walk down. As the song says, when I look at the “Ten years that got behind you”, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be happy with how the run is going. I know that I am so far. 

Filed under: Do It Your Self, Europe, france, River Cottage, Ruminating, Travel, worry, Writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Fox & Maus

There is a window, or rather a view from a window, that is absolutely my favorite. It is directly opposite my dining room table and when I sit there, chair turned at ninety degrees, and computer or book perched on my lap, the scene set before me is of ivy covered trees, a steep, forest covered hill and between them, the Lot river running merrily down its bed. Rivers differ endlessly from one to another and though I live all the Fall, Winter and Spring off the coast of Maine surrounded by the serious North Atlantic, all Summer long I get to inspect this running meditation just outside my window. 

When I look back at my childhood memories, my interaction with water features more strongly than I would have originally expected. There is no ocean in Western New Hampshire so the water I found came in a variety of forms. There were the ponds, usually filled for agricultural or water control jobs rather than the purely aesthetic, filled with nondescript, little brown fish and eighty year old snapping turtles the size of trash can lids, reportedly hungry for toes and lurking in the tea colored depths. There were the lakes, ice cold and fed from unseen springs deep in the cracked granite that made their bottoms and shores. They were harder to get to, usually requiring a parent to ferry young passengers to their edges and then, reserved only for the hottest days as plunging into their waters would suck your breath away. Then there were streams. For me, these were the gold on an endless Summer afternoon. Their sources usually findable, the water moving quickly, keeping the icky things like leeches to a minimum and the water’s speed being enough to undercut root covered banks making the perfect spot to either look for fish or simply play. There were a number of them that I would visit either alone or with friends and spend hours poking around them. On a few hot days, I would just sit down in the current and listen to the sound as it jumped over the round stones. I absolutely love that sound. 

Rivers were trickier. They could be dangerous and needed respecting. The biggest one near my home town would be the Connecticut. True, it wasn’t “near” me, but it’s the feature that separates New Hampshire and Vermont and she runs hard and deep. My childhood was filled with stories of how it was a highway for the native population and later, European traders and settlers. There were other warning stories as well.  Seemingly every year we would hear about folks who drown in it, either falling through thin river ice and swept away under the sheet or simply being sucked out into the current when they ventured too far from whatever calm stretch they were swimming in. It was serious business and one that honestly spooked me. Swimming there to me felt like the equivalent of playing hopscotch on the highway. You could… but you really shouldn’t.

There was a local option that was safer though, a river named the Ashuelot (pronounced Ash-whee-lot) which is an offshoot of the Connecticut and is far more manageable and always called to me. It was also getable by a kid on a bicycle and wound through a lot of the places I liked to frequent. It changed so much from one part to the next and that was a lot of the fun. Some spots were wide and shallow where you could roll up pant legs and flip rocks looking for crayfish. Other parts were deep and slow with old, smooth tree trunks protruding from the calm surface, slowly accumulating reeds and other debris in their skeletal grasp as the water rolled by. You could see the bottom in the shallow places but the water was stained with the tannins of a billion Fall leaves which you could watch pass silently by, turning over and over only a little below the surface. Unlike the Connecticut, there was a calm here. The industries that used to harness the Ashuelot’s power with water wheels and dams and who used to pollute it with industrial who-knows-what were all closed now or had moved over to other interests and were powered by electrical lines, leaving the river to flush itself clean, reclaim its banks and give a young kid a place to explore. I would walk its edge, canoe it with my Dad, mess around in its shallows and fruitlessly try to catch its fish. 

When I grew up, I moved to the sea and there I’ve been for the last quarter century. I love it there, but to my surprise, I discovered that I had sort of forgotten about the rivers.

When we were looking and looking and looking for our future house in France, we knew one thing for absolute sure. We had made a list of what we felt was important and sitting right at the top was water access. Actually, we initially referred to it as “water security” as the world heats up and water becomes more and more of a pressing news item. There are so many places in France that are picturesque and inviting, but not all of this amazing country is green or sadly, will remain so in the coming years. We wanted to bet on green. We had cast our eyes all over this country for the right spot and eventually, the ball in the roulette wheel landed on the upper Lot valley with its high ridgelines funneling a river of the same name on its way to the West. As you travel its length to toward Bordeaux, you’d see something mighty, wide and strong with boats plying its brown waters, but here where I overlook its runnings, it’s a very different thing. 

Not too far from our house, the Lot is joined by another river, the Truyere, and the two gang up to bring cooling, clear water deep into the crinkles of the low valleys and gorges below. Here the river is still very inviting and reminds me a great deal of the Ashuelot. One could even say that it reminds me of it a Lot. 

One could… but probably shouldn’t. Apologies. 

Long ago, our little French hamlet had a job and the river out front looked substantially different. It was a loading station for the river boats that piled up and down this river carrying timber and charcoal for the big cities down in Bordeaux. The place was fairly bustling and the river lapped at the feet of our house and at times, over it. The Lot was prone to flooding and the markings with corresponding dates on the houses up river hold testament to the dangers of living on a waterway. But just as on the Ashuelot back in New Hampshire, priorities of industry changed with time. Wood began to move via the new and more dependable rail network and charcoal found fewer and fewer consumers as the world moved to coal. The industry here died away and the trees grew back and all was pretty quiet in the upper Lot Valley. Other than chestnuts, our little region didn’t produce much. Then, one day, the hydro engineers came. 

Dams are a touchy subject back in the States because of how they change the natural world around them and who ultimately gets the diverted water. Fish stocks suffer as they can’t move effectively upriver and reservoirs flood out and displace old towns. Here in France, guessing by their regularity, the feelings seem largely different. The Lot and the Truyere hosted many an ancient mill that filled a variety of purposes. Some made flour while others drove cast iron machinery on massive leather belts. Now, multiple dams along their lengths bring both security from flooding and electricity for our homes. Without them, I honestly don’t know if we would have settled here. The fish are restocked yearly, though I’m guessing that they mostly feed for the local wildlife rather than growing to much size for anglers to try to catch. The dams do something else as well. Something very unexpected. They give us tides.

Normally, visibly rising weather levels in a river over the course of a morning are cause for alarm. Here, it’s the norm and you can hear the change as well as see it. The Lot in front of our house is fairly shallow, at least in places, and the water skips along the tops of river stones worn round but untold volumes of time and flow. It’s a happy, burbling noise, not too loud, but often there waiting for me when I get up in the morning. I pour the coffee and sit in my favorite spot with a proprietorial, approving nod upon seeing how she flows this morning as if I had anything to do with it. As the hours roll by, the jumbled sound of water on rocks disappears as the flow increases and the bed of the river vanishes from sight. Things move faster and mid stream islands sink below the surface. The dam in town is opening the sluices and a new sound drifts up the banks of the running river. 

Voices.

By the time it’s getting embarrassing to still be in bed, but before it’s legal to start poking about for lunch, brightly colored kayaks start to sweep by the house, filled with smiling, chatty river riders. One after another they go and for much of the day we can see them scoot by at a good clip, paddling lazily along, letting the swift current of the Lot do most of the work for them. They have rented these little indestructible boats from a local outdoors organization who busses the boats and riders to the headwaters and then picks them back up after a fun day on the water. It’s really quite lovely to watch and even more fun to join in. It showcases the beauty of the region and brings a nice injection of life to the waterway without overtaxing either. I like hearing people laugh and call to each other as they float along, sometimes expertly looking ahead and planning their route and sometimes sideways, trying to avoid a protruding rock as the paddle ineffectively, flailing and laughing only to bounce off the obstacle in the end. It’s honestly a lot of fun. 

Sometimes the tide is up. Sometimes the tide is low. Having lived for so long on the ocean, it’s odd to me how reassuring it is to glance out the window and mention “Oh, it’s high tide.” to the smirks of my family. It’s the best of both worlds and just like the ocean, I don’t think I’ll ever tire of watching it. Water seems to be a part of me whether it’s watching waves crashing on the rocks or the rolling by of the Lot in front of our little river cottage. We seem to be water people. Just being by it makes us happy, and as far as I can tell, that’s been the whole point all along. 

Filed under: Aveyron, Cantal, Europe, france, new england, Nostalgia, River Cottage, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Next Page »
Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started