Quarter Year

The girls hopped from rock to rock with their skirts brushing the bushes. They sang high-pitched hymns that reached us in the wind, voices fragile like glass, clear and pure as the hill’s high air. From here we could see the Mediterranean to our right and the Pyrenees to the left.

Gabriel knelt.

“This is rocayrol.” The frizzy little lettuce grows in the cracks in high places. He slid his knifeblade into the rock and sliced the rocayrol at its root, tossed it in his basket then searched for another. Gabriel wears a leather necklace with a stamp-sized image of the Virgin Mary on one side and Jesus on the other, and it dangled outside his shirt.

“That’s asparagus,” he said, pointing to a fern leaning into the path. I’d never seen wild asparagus. “That’s fennel. And over there, that’s lemon balm. A tea of lemon balm, rosemary and mint gives men strength in the morning.”

We were collecting dinner salad for 13 people – the parents, nine kids and us two guests. Though they live on a farm in the valley, they collect much of their food from the surrounding hills. “God is generous,” the father said. And while neither of us is religious, as travelers our job is to listen to understand. And we understood.

“Rocayrol has the most wonderful taste,” he said. “It loves high rocks in the sun.” So we climbed high to find it, and as we collected it we listened to the girls’ crystalline hymns.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

Pictures from Alaska, monks from Thailand, client from Bellevue, words from my heart.

by Mike

The monks told us not to enjoy our food, so I tried, but it wasn’t so fun.

(Click to Expand)

by Mike

There are people who don’t care whether they hurt others. They don’t want to improve themselves. They don’t care about being nor doing good. These posts aren’t for them.

There are others who want to do good and are critical of their own habits and practices. They pay attention to the consequences of their actions. They do the research to make sure that they live and spend cleanly and according to their morals. Even if they aren’t perfect, they’re working on it. To them I say, Keep fighting the good fight. But these posts aren’t for them either. The next few posts about food are for... clicky

by Mike, because he’s the self-righteous one.

These are three simple things that everyone can do today to live more in the present. (read more)

by Mike

Who drew these lines across southern France, the lonely stone fences that melt in the woods, miles from homes, centuries from birth? This web holding trees to the floor of the forest, it twists and it crumbles, it picks itself up. Bordering paths that I’m sure are forgotten, they frame ruined houses which years ago burned. (more words and pictures)

by Mike

I don’t pay enough attention to a place’s ‘placeness,’ even though we travel so much, and quieting my monologue was powerful in letting me be present on the olive farm in Coaraze.

Here’s what’s there: Water on long grass that wets your shoes; dozens of bird songs from hundreds of birds; dry folds in the hazy valley; clay; upset chickens that sound like monsters; the echoing olive mill with its slick concrete floor; a shovelful of purple olives; sharp kiwi branch cuttings that sliced my arm; the cold and narrow aluminum ladder; greenish shadows of plants against the greenhouse plastic; scurrying spiders; dirt caking rotten tomatoes; the cold that descends when the sun drops behind the mountain at 4:30; honks that work their way up the valley’s tight corners ahead of the bus; barks from dogs down below calling to dogs farther on; the compounding smells of thousands of meals cooked in Marguerite’s kitchen, what became an average smell of food from this valley over 100 years; Claude’s cold fire; the jars and never-finished dishes in Claude’s cold kitchen; the peace of an olive tree in the sun; the strength of a deep-rooted sticker bush…

To know a place takes a while, and it takes attention, presence.

(one more photo)

by Mike

The first 10 days at the olive farm were my own private meditation retreat – Azure was still in the US and I had all the time to myself, except for when I was working and eating.

I would wake up before sunrise each day and put on some hot water for honey tea, which is my new favorite thing in the world. (Honey is the new sugar… er, the old sugar.) Then I’d write in my journal, meditate, make some breakfast, read, then work from about 8:30am to noon. Lunch was from noon to 1pm or so, then another meditation session, some more reading/writing and a nap. From 2-5 I worked again, then I had more time to read/write, more tea. At around 6 or so I would go into the main house and start a fire in the fireplace and Claude and I would talk and eat until around 8pm. At that point I would head back to my room, write a wrap up of the day, meditate and read until I fell asleep, usually before 9pm.

I learned SO MUCH in this time.

In the above photo (which was not staged for the blog, believe it or not) You can see all my body nourishment on the right, all my brain nourishment on the left, both culminating in the middle with my journal and my tea bowl (they drink tea out of bowls here). One book is “The Spiritual Emmerson,” which is so darn excellent that I can’t get through it because every paragraph is thick with insights. The other is the equally mind-blowing, “In Defense of Food,” (thank you Joanne!) which is my new bible. Needless to say, after reading that book, the nourishment on the right side of the table changed dramatically. Underneath that are “A Year in Provence,” which was almost unbearable, and “Against the Stream,” a Buddhist guide for people trying to live differently in the modern world (thank you Mathew!).

Next to my journal are two note books (one on top of the other). The smaller one is for random notes during the day – addresses and telephone numbers. The larger one was for new French words, but now I’m using it to take notes on sustainable living. In my journal I write about things I want to remember, things I’m trying to figure out, thoughts and feelings, etc. I write in red pen, always.

Also, there is a mini computer, which I didn’t really use, and a French-English dictionary that’s not very good.

On the right, for breakfast, is a baguette, some bread with grains, a tea cake, Camembert, marmalade and olive oil. There’s also water and tea. After reading “In Defense of Food” I switched to fruit, whole grained bread, olive oil and scrambled eggs with spinach (cooked in real butter), with honey tea (just honey with hot water) and water in the mornings.

That’s how I roll.