Take A Hike

Yesterday afternoon, I took Blanche and we walked through the woods and up a large hill to our commune. The village sits high on a ridge overlooking the winding river valley, and the placid farm houses tucked amongst fields of green grape vines. I haven’t been walking or exercising much since I’ve arrived, as I haven’t been able to get on any meaningful schedule. But with the house full of four teenagers who need to be fed three times a day, a husband who to his credit is a joy to be around but still disrupts my scheduling attempts, and being surrounded by twenty cats, I wanted to escape.

During the walk we heard the sounds of wild boar rustling through the woods; a flock of real sheep baa-ed at Blanche but she haughtily ignored them; water babbling from a small stream into an old communal clothes washing basin; lots of different birds; and two Mirage jets flying so low that I swore I could see the pilots faces as they tilted their planes towards the earth. These jets fly over every day, usually at noon, but in the past week, their flights have become more frequent. Blanche is so used to them that she doesn’t flinch. I cringe and wince whenever I hear them screaming through the sky destroying my reverie of pastoral rural France.

Old “roads” so ancient that they can only accommodate foot or cart travel, traverse the wooded hills that surround our house. The Maire sent out this month’s newsletter and highlighted two of these old traces, one of which passes closely by the back of our house. So now we’ll have lots of visitors walking through the property. Yesterday, I noticed that there was more horse poop than normal. When I first arrived here in 2001, giving encouragement to hikers and horsemen to traverse our property would have annoyed me. Being an American, I was wedded to the idea that the ownership of private property precludes strangers from wandering across it at their pleasure without permission. The first week I was here, I was sitting on the terrace one gorgeous morning, listening to the birds, eating a croissant and drinking tea when four Dutch walkers appeared from behind the barns, didn’t say anything, and just stared at me as if I was a figure in a wax museum. (I knew they were Dutch because I could hear them talking as they approached the terrace.) I said bonjour and they just nodded and walked down the driveway.

This summer I have noticed the phenomenon of Dutch tourists sitting on our small bridge which traverses the ruisseau. I hope this spot hasn’t been written up in some Dutch tourist guide. They stay at a camping area down the road, and being on vacation, I guess they feel the need to take a walk. Our bridge is about two kilometers from their camping spot, and either not being used to walking, or noticing a sweet little bridge to sit upon, they decide to rest there. I wave bonjour to them if I see them.

Monsieur Dupuis is helping out a lawyer on behalf of an American couple in the north of the departement who own a mill. Their problem is that one of these old roads leads right past their house, and they don’t like the foot traffic that it attracts. They are going to court to close the footpath. I hope they lose.

I discovered the old roads last year, when I had to take Blanche and Olympia out for daily walks because they didn’t have a pasture and were therefore required to stay in their little house for the majority of the day and night. We would hike for up to four hours a day, and we discovered an endless system of beautiful, stone-walled, or sunken, winding footpaths which led us through tunnels of trees, to high panoramic vistas of the valleys, and we discovered all sorts of ruins of farm houses, chateaux, a castle, sheepherder shelters, and phylloxera-abandoned terraced vineyards.

Rarely did we see other walkers. Unless it was Sunday, and then we would occasionally run into some village’s walking club, whose members were always very friendly and wanted to pet the sheep and ask me lots of questions about them. “Don’t they need leashes?” “Are they mother and daughter?”

More often, we wouldn’t meet another soul on the paths. When I first started walking the paths, I walked with a switchblade that I had purchased in the big town. I practiced flipping it open and felt a little pathetic rush of power when I did so. After a few weeks of walking with the switchblade, I thought I might like to move up to a bigger model and so the next time I went to the big town, I went to the hunting shop. Displayed in the window was a wide array of knives. At the center of the display, there was a huge gutting knife that scared the hell out of me. Seeing that, I decided to forego purchasing a bigger switchblade, for if I met someone in the woods who meant to do me harm, they were going to have a bigger knife than me, and they would know how to use it. I decided to stop my meaningless arms escalation.

One morning, around 8, the sheep and I were startled when a horse and rider came quickly up behind us. I turned, wishing I had my little switchblade, and there was a young girl astride the horse hurrying by us. The jeune fille couldn’t have been more than twelve; she was attired in her riding helmet, jodhpurs, and high boots, accompanied only by her dog. From that point on I didn’t worry about walking in the woods. I realized that even with my knife, I probably wouldn’t hear someone lying in wait for me, because I couldn’t even tell that a horse was galloping up the path behind me until it had arrived. I came to the sad realization that I was a paranoid American who had watched too many episodes of America’s Most Wanted, and from that point forward I would walk in peace in the woods. If it was my destiny to be attacked, then so be it. The reason I love France is because I’ve found peace here and I needed to discard the big-city phobias I brought here with me that prevented me from living here in peace. (And statistically, it’s much safer to walk in France than it is in the U.S.)

About ten years ago, the mayor of our commune wanted to raise some money, for himself or the commune I'm not clear, and so he let property owners buy the right to close off their paths. I only know of one owner who took advantage of his offer. They are French and that regrettably, denies me the opportunity to once again rail about the insensitivities of the Americans, British or Dutch. This French couple owns the castle down the road from us. My friend, Pierre-Yves is an avid runner and he had a run-in with the wife when he was running on her now private path one day. She threatened to sick her dog on him. He picked up a big stone and threatened to hit the dog with it. She let him pass and told him not to come back again.

Last summer, this same woman was driving down the road while I was crossing it with the sheep. Attracted by the sheep, she stopped to talk, and told me that I could use her path whenever I wanted. She also invited me to coffee the next afternoon saying she would like to show me around the castle. When I arrived, she wasn’t there. I waited for half an hour, left my card, and then left. She never called, or contacted me, and I’ve never seen her again. So I was forced to agree with Pierre-Yves, she is very rude and inconsiderate. And, I am now of the opinion that anyone who shuts off the walking path that goes through their property is rude and inconsiderate.

That is why I hope that the Americans from Los Angeles are unsuccessful in petitioning the court to allow them to close their path to the public. If they are allowed to do so, they are destroying the heritage of the countryside. They are destroying the very thing that attracted them to this area. They are destroying the neighborliness and trust that infuses and animates rural France. Perhaps the Americans from Los Angeles haven’t gotten out and walked the paths, and so they don’t understand how precious they are. If you wander the forest paths here, they will lead you to the very center of Nature’s soul, and if you find that, you’ll find your own. Maybe I should get the American’s phone number from Monsieur Dupuis and offer to take them on a hike.