by Mike
We’ve spent the last two days in the medieval town of Noyers-sur-Serein right in the middle of France, about 200km south of Paris. It’s typically French, as typical as I’ve seen with their admirable attention to detail and commitment to a high quality of life. The Bourgogne region has fairytale castles, rolling green hills with woods filling the crevasses and lining the rivers… the movie Chocolat was filmed here.
This town – Noyers – fills the bend of a river and its buildings have exposed beams on the facades. They lean over the stony street like they’re about to give up, and life goes on as usual. There are only 700 residents here. We saw signs for an “Old Chateau” so we walked out of town and followed the river against the foot of a forested hill as it bent to the south. The next sign pointing to the chateau was so white-washed that we walked past it and only realized we’d missed the turn a mile later. So we turned around and found the path and turned up the hill. We went up the steps, steps made of wood, and walked up the hill through the trees until we came to a plateau where two towers were being excavated. It looked like the top of the towers were still original, they stuck up like broken fork tines, but the bottom was being expertly redone by a team of archaeologists, I hope.
There was a sign pointing to a panoramic view, so we followed the path across a golden field, then we crossed down into a valley and up the other side. When we got to the top we kept walking through the woods but noticed that the ground was strange – it was bumpy and just didn’t look right. We started to notice a lot of white stones and we started to realize that the path was taking us over a buried city. To the left was a wall pushing out of the ground, to the right the inside of a turret had been exposed. The valley we’d walked across had been a pair of city walls. We’d later learn that we had walked near a dungeon and a church and the town square. All buried on the top of the hill.
Anyway, we’re going up to Paris today to say goodbye to the scooter. We’re heading home in just a few weeks so we feel we should start trying to sell it now rather than wait until we’re desperate. Neither Azure nor I are looking forward to being back in a big city, but it’ll be brief – after it’s sold we’re going to go back down south for the end of the trip.
Posted on March 19, 2009 at 11:49 pm.
by Mike
Philippe’s grandfather was found dead in the Maquis with his back against a tree and his rifle across his lap. Philippe sat in the position to show us as he retold the story, holding his arms to his chest as if clutching a rifle. “The Gestappo – the Italian police, you know? – they were in the Maquis on a full moon night and saw the light shine on the barrel. When they found him he was dead. Heart attack at 46.”
Philippe shares his grandfather’s passion for guns and hunting, as many men do on this island. A common scene was the Hunter’s Bar in Ota: a bunch of men sat drinking Pastis and looking at guns on a computer or in magazines. They wore camouflage jackets and hats and there were boar’s heads and stuffed birds on the walls. They poured more Pastis and played cards and other hunters came and went, everyone greeting everyone else.
I asked Philippe if he hunts with dogs and he said he doesn’t, he prefers to hunt at night. “Wow, that’s intense,” I said.
In the book we’re reading about Corsica (Granite Island by Dorothy Carrington) there’s a chapter about other night hunters, the Mazzeri. The Mazzeri were improperly baptized individuals who lived in the villages but apart from the people. They had the gift, though, of foretelling death. At night they’d hunt in the fragrant Maquis and kill the first animal that came along – a dog or a boar or whatever. Then they’d roll it onto its back, look in the face and recognize somebody from the area. In the morning they announced the news that the person they saw would die within a year.
Carrington writes that the Mazzeri didn’t actually cause the deaths, rather they interpreted what was sent to them. They were compelled to go into the Maquis to hunt just as the animal was compelled to cross their path. It was Destiny, and their only part was to read it. But she writes that night hunting becomes addictive for some Mazzeri, despite their reluctance to read more deaths.
The closer you look at the tradition of the Mazzeri, the further back you look “into the night of time,” further back even than the megalith builders who inhabited the island thousands of years ago, whose works you can still see and touch, faces carved into upright, human-sized stones. The Mazzeri reflect a people grappling with the basic human activities of hunting and dying at the dawn of cognizance.
When I asked Father Joseph if the megaliths were interesting to visit, I was kinda annoyed by his answer, “Well, they’re ok if you’re interested in rocks and old stuff.” But now that I better understand the historical context I can see why he answered that way. The megaliths (“rocks and old stuff”) were symbols for the beliefs and traditions that Christianity struggled for a thousand years to dislodge. The megalith builders were active on the island since 3000 B.C., while the traditional customs & beliefs lasted from the dawn of cognizance deep into Christianity’s crusade – even up until the Second World War Corsica remained an island writhing in the coils of busy myths. By contrast, Christianity has only been here since about 500 A.D. That means that in the year 3509 A.D, it will still be another 2000 years before Christian beliefs will have been on this island as long as the megalith builder beliefs have been here to now.
A couple weeks ago I wrote to you about touching the stones that ancient people touched and trying to imagine what compelled them to build. I wrote that I hoped “my mind would be refilled with the mind that built those walls” and maybe I’d tap into something fundamental to the human experience that I’m missing now. Only I failed to connect. Obviously I don’t believe I can conjure the minds of the past, I don’t believe in that. But I’m starting to realize that a fundamental piece of human experience that I’m missing is the very instrument that allowed people to communicate with their ancestors – magic.
The disappearance of magic is a symptom of the changed pace of the world. I think that the key to understanding another person’s experience is living the rhythm of their life, and to understand the wall builders I’d have to quit using a car and stop working a job and extract the internet from my body and ignore the media. It would mean living with the seasons and working with my body and living a shorter life but maybe living in constant wonder.
Philippe, stroking the barrel of his gun, said, “This is my dream, realized. I wanted my life to be hunting, guns, motorcycles, cheese, goats.” He didn’t mention his wife and daughter in the next room. “And now I have it.”
We left his house late at night and as we rode home I thought about what it would be like going into the Maquis with a rifle and just sitting and waiting and listening. I thought about what I would feel if I sat still for a night, and what I’d hear if I didn’t talk, and what I’d see if there were no lights, and what I’d sense if time and rhythm slowed to heartbeat and breath. I wondered if Philippe was addicted to night hunting like the Mazzeri and if I could be too.
The scooter pulled through the night to the crest of the hill and from a height that felt like floating, we looked down the spine of Corsica. There were a few towns hidden in folds facing the sea. It felt mythical at that time, and the next night we went back to the same spot to take pictures. I thought about my own dream realized, honestly: traveling with Azure by motorcycle (the scooter has done fine) with a camera and my journal, trying to learn the rhythm of other people’s lives.
Posted on March 13, 2009 at 6:38 am.
by Mike
On the west coast of Corsica there’s a tower at each point and from the top of one tower you can see the next. The islanders built them in the 1500s as an early warning system against repeated Barbary pirate attacks, but the towers weren’t so successful – the Corsican way of life was completely disrupted and the residents fled the fertile lowlands for the rocky mountains.
We parked our scooter off a red dirt road running a ridge. From the ridge we saw the tower farther down the point, we could see the sea below and the mountains behind. Corsica is a wild island. Here, the trees were low, thick and untamed and it was very rocky. The island feels empty sometimes, primitive – all over the island there are grand views of mountains and valleys with no trace of people.
We walked toward the tower on a red path that cut through the trees and passed stone walls. Walls ran wherever they wanted, in the forest there would be a wall with some steps, then more walls, then there would be a cleared area where a structure had once stood. We could see the outline of a building in stone lines covered by moss. Then there were more trees and more walls.
There are so many walls on the island on the highest abandoned hill and right in the center of town. They must have taken so much work. Who built all these walls? People say the pyramids are a wonder of the world, but I wonder about the walls.
Off the path I saw one rock that sat like a little hut and it had a hole in the bottom big enough for an arm and it was hollow inside. I wondered what the rock had hidden.
After an hour we made it to the base of the tower and a relatively modern staircase took us up to the doorway. The stone tower was quiet, we were alone. This tower was only naked stones, nothing to indicate it has changed at all since it was in use. The main room was cool and a window facing north (toward Ajaccio and the mouth of the bay) let in natural light. There were two fireplaces – one very large and the other smaller – that were well-used. I imagine one was for heat and the other was for signals, but that’s total speculation. Only the small fireplace had a chimney, I don’t know what happened to the smoke from the large one.
The ceiling was a high dome and a staircase took us up through the wall and let us out on the spectacular roof. It had a 360 degree view enclosed by the turrets. The roof was dominated by the blue sky. On one side we could see the bay cutting into the mountains and on the other a steep forested hill rose from the Mediterranean. We could see other towers on other points in the distance.
We stayed in a Catholic convent all week (did I not mention that?) and when I asked Father Joseph if the ancient sites were good to visit he said, “Well, they’re ok if you’re interested rocks and old stuff.” (well, yeah, actually I am). Later, after a disappointing experience looking for a 4000-year-old castle without success, I wondered why I’m drawn to the old stones – why care?
By standing where they stood or touching the cold stone they had shaped I think I’m hoping to understand how they had thought. What drove them to build a wall climbing the side of a hill and is that a piece of being human that I could still understand? Maybe by touching that stone I’d tap into something fundamental to the human experience that I’m missing now.
Being a human today is not what it was like to be human then. When I’m touching a stone, as hard as I try it’s difficult to forget my place in time. Some day I’d like to meditate in a place like that and see where it takes me. Meditation is for clearing the mind but I want my mind to be refilled with the mind that built those walls. What was that place? Maybe I’d need drugs instead. It’s sad that those minds are extinct.
God, everything I write is depressing. Sorry.
Anyway, we’re stuck in Ajaccio because we’re low on gas and there’s a gas workers’ strike (so the stations are empty too) and the protestors have blocked the port. The talks aren’t going well, apparently, so we don’t know how long we’ll be here.
Posted on March 3, 2009 at 11:26 am.
by Mike
From Toulon we drove east brushing the foothills of the Chaine de la Sainte Baume mountains, through one-street towns like La Valette, Soulies-Pont, Cuers and Pierrefeu.
I told Azure I really look forward to the day when I meet a Frenchman who says, “I’m from Toulon,” and I say, “Oh! We were in Toulon!” and he says, “Well, actually I’m from a really small town an hour outside Toulon that nobody’s ever heard of,” and I’ll say, “What’s the name of the town?” and he’ll say, “Les Mayons,” and I’ll say, “We’ve been there!” and he’ll buy me a pastis.
From those foothills we crossed a valley and entered a different mountain chain called the Massif des Maures and drove up a valley to Collobrieres, a town that’s crowned itself capitol of hazelnuts, I think. There were little pictures of nuts everywhere, stores sold nut butter and so on. It’s a small town on a small river with a small 12th century single-arch bridge that’s still used as the main road for cars. It’s a really small bridge.
We went into the local bar to grab a hot chocolate and it was about a dozen men and Azure and me. There was a guy at the table next to us looking at the horse racing schedule in the paper and once he’d made his choices he called rudely to the bartender to come over and place the bets electronically for him. The bartender did it, then the guy left the bar. Then he reappeared outside in the window next to me smoking a cigarette and watching the race on the TV above my head.
The room next door was a hopping restaurant (in these small towns there seems to be only one restaurant where everyone goes) and at about 2:00pm the waiter called in through the doors, “25 cafes!” The bartender gave a look – he only had one espresso machine. Someone in the bar chimed in with, “Make it 26!” which drew laughter.
We drove farther up into the mountains and followed a sign for “Notre Dame des Anges” (Our Lady of the Angels), and the road kept going up and up, riding the ridges of hills. Finally it looped around the highest hill and dropped us at the steps of a sanctuary built at the crest in 571 A.D.! From the sanctuary you could see both the Alps (which we actually couldn’t see because of trees) and the Mediterranean 20km away. The sun was SO bright, I was able to shoot pictures of Azure laying on the ground with her helmet on, exhausted from the ride, at 100 ISO on f22 with no problem.
The inside of the sanctuary had a little natural light from a (dirty) skylight and the blue walls were covered in relics and plaques that people had sent as thanks for their miracles. It was one of the odder churches I’ve seen and I’m glad I got some good pictures.
We walked from the dark sanctuary into the bright courtyard and I had to shade my eyes. A man walked right in front of me and I turned to look – he was a young black monk in a violet robe and he stopped in the shadows, his body curved in front of a wooden door. The top of the door was round and he was trying to unlock the door with his set of old keys. His skin was a beautiful smooth brown like hazlenut butter, like the color of the wooden door, and I decided I had to ask if I could take his picture. He hesitated, smiled and said, “I’m sorry, no.” Azure and I learned our lesson – never ask. It’s a picture I’ll remember, anyway.
From Notre Dame des Anges we descended the other side of the Massif des Maures and hit the town of Gonfaron, took an immediate right and went back into the mountains through Les Mayons. We had trouble finding the road to get back in, but once we did we were rewarded – the sun was getting low (it was about 4:30 and we were on the Northeast side of the mountains) so there was orange light to compliment the spectacular views of the valley. In addition, the road went from paved to dirt so suddenly there wasn’t even that gray-black strip of asphalt we usually have to tolerate, instead it was just many different shades of orange and brown leaves, dirt and wood.
The road got rougher and we kept climbing higher. Soon we could tell that the road was in such bad condition that either they had never paved it or it had been unrepaired for decades. We passed several private property signs and by the time we suspected we weren’t allowed to be where we were, we were too deep into the drive to turn around.
We kept driving and bumping and after half an hour my heart was racing some, I’ll admit. I was worried what would happen if we got a flat tire right before sunset when we hadn’t seen another car on the road, hadn’t seen another person for 10 kilometers and we weren’t convinced we were even going the right way. We came to a five-way intersection of dirt and torn-asphalt roads. The signs were all faded and I didn’t trust they were still pointing in the right direction. We decided which road to go on based mostly on where we figured we shouldn’t go, and we headed west.
The road remained dirt and we started seeing a house here, a fence there, and when we turned a corner there were two guys digging a rock out of a hillside.
“Hi, can you tell me which way to the D39?”
The guy didn’t want to give me a straight answer, then finally said, “You know, this road is forbidden to vehicle traffic, it’s private.”
“I know, I’m sorry, we’re honestly lost and we’re trying to leave, I’m sorry.”
“Where are you trying to go?”
“Toulon, eventually, but right now we’re going to Collom… Collombro…”
“Collombrieres?”
“That’s it!”
“Keep going straight, the road will take you to the D39.”
When we finally got back to the paved highway there was a sign facing anyone entering the dirt road, “This road is forbidden to vehicle traffic under penalty of lawsuit.” Yikes. I think the people back in those hills really tried to protect their privacy, to isolate themselves from everyone else. When I think of people like that I imagine them to be loners or Unabomber types… different. But these guys were completely personable and eventually kind. They looked normal. They could have been anyone we’d have met in Toulon or Nice.
We finally wound our way out of the mountains and back to Toulon. We hit a supermarket and made a picnic, then got in line at the ferry terminal for an overnight boat to Corsica.
Posted on February 25, 2009 at 2:02 am.
