the wind and the willows (in the Perigord Noir, France)

In a moment of foolish hope, I purchased the other day a book of balades (walks) in the area. Balades for the timid, the moderates and the boisterous.

This morning I picked, ambitiously, a boisterous balade. Four hours of boisterous walking, how good is that! And I am so full of foresight that I am even checking directions to make sure I understand all the French. What the hell is goudron?

I set out. First, a brief pop into the town of the starting point – Montignac.




Need that café-bar jumpstart of a noisette and chocolatine.

Okay, now out I go.

And then in I return. My, it’s blustery. Sure, the Net said it would be on and off showers and a rather cool high of 50, but that’s what they’re told to say. Who believes these dudes anyway.

Still, I don’t think this is the perfect weather for balading, especially boisterously.

I sit in the car and contemplate at which point in life I became a weather wimp. Alright, no boisterous hike. But that doesn’t mean no hike at all.

I drive to the village of St Leon-sur-Vezere, the starting point of a timid one hour jaunt. St. Leon-sur-Vezere is one of the thousand or so villages in France with the designation of “prettiest village in France” and so I take time to stroll through it.

And I find it nice. Really, quite nice.


a trio: the shed, the chateau and the church


Oh, people are eating at the local Restaurant de la Poste (or is it a bar? or a tabac? or all three?)! I can vaguely see them through the window!




But is it lunchtime already? I just finished my chocolatine in Montignac! Well now, maybe a small lunch would warm me up so that I would be raring to go balading.

I enter. Oh, such hot and yummy looking soup! What is it? Onion? I see egg in it as well.



And a cepe omelet, yes, perfect. I have such fondness for eggs here (happy chickens, happy eggs). And cepes – who can reject a cepe in an egg dish? With a French salad. Can’t get enough of the omelet and the salad. Think how much we would accomplish in this world if we served French salads at every important occasion. Yes, sure, a glass of red wine de Bergereac would also be great.





Hold on, let me take stock: the intent was to eat a light breakfast and hike for four hours. It is already 2 p.m. and thus far I have eaten a delicious chocolate croissant, a fantastic farm lunch and hiked not at all. And I am contemplating whether to break down and order the one dessert on the menu – a tarte tatin (a version of an apple up-side-down cake), wouldn’t you know it, a real favorite of mine!



I order the tarte tatin. Everyone does. And I am certain as apple pie and taxes that no one else in the restaurant is contemplating a boisterous balade for the afternoon. We all sink in the juices of French food. What a way to go.


Five minutes later, the heavy hand of guilt pushes me up from the chair, out the door and points me to the wind and the willows. A timid balade for timid me.

And it is a lovely little walk. Along river banks and past 12th century churches with interiors that have no distractions. Stark interiors. Beautiful in their simplicity, so long as you’re not the one who has to find physical comfort in it on a regular basis.



stark within



...not so outside


I walk the river bank, past weeping willows and stone huts, past meadows and orchards.





…into the woods and up a hill and -- what’s this, rain? Really? Not even just a wee shower?

A shame. But it’s not as if you can escape a balade once you have begun a balade. I walk through tall grasses with lovely dandelion flowers, I wrap my arms around my camera to protect it from the wetness and I forge ahead. Dripping, I reach my wee little car and I exhale.

A good day.

life, in three chapter (from southwest France)

1. From the Gardens of Marqueyssac, walking the cliff ridge that overlooks the Dordogne River valley in the Perigord

Bring out the sun, the smell of boxwood, the sound of bees in rosemary bushes and tractors plowing the fields below, back and forth, back and forth. Point me to the view of the river with rows of poplars at its side. Steer me to a warm rock. I’ll sit and not move for hours.



boxwood, trees, castle



bee in rosemary




tractor work



on the banks - poplars



around the river bend, cliffs, with a village at the base



Still, by the time the small cloudburst comes, I am at the café at the park’s entrance, finishing off a salad and a glass of rosé de Bergerac.




I move my plates under the umbrella and wait for the dessert of Perigoord honey and Perigord walnut ice cream, along with a noisette. The good view stays with me.





Back when I entered the gardens, I was handed a folder with descriptions of plantings, birds and minerals, with a few poems thrown in.




Somehow it felt more English than French to be hiking with a folder of poems. Though the growth of boxwood is pretty limited to Mediterranean climates, so England is out one there.

Always, a whiff of boxwood will remind me of the summer I spent (as a teenager) with my parents in Sochi, by the Black Sea. Decisive summer. I concluded then that life cam be less fretful outside my childhood home.

2. From Sarlat, a small medieval city in reaction to which one writer exclaimed: is everyone here engaged in the production or sale of foie gras?!





The answer is no, not everyone. Consider my purchases today:

black truffles [see insert below]
walnuts

chocolate covered walnuts
chocolate croissant
baguette
smoked salmon
home made nougat

mustard
a painting [see chapter 3 below]


Note the absence of foie gras. Imagine me bringing foie gras as a gift for friends back home. I may as well wrap a fur around my shoulders and drive out in an SUV.

In any event, let me assure you that this place is not all about geese and duck livers. Much goes into the Perigord pot.





So alright. In the high and lofty pursuit of honesty here, on Ocean, I must admit that yesterday I set foot in a foie gras store and let the sales person smear some free samples for me on a fresh slice of baguette. Moreover, today at dinner, I was served an entire appetizer portion of foie gras de canard.

And I have to say that foie gras de canard is a great improvement over the liver I was asked to eat as a kid so that I would be less anemic. I am, most likely, still anemic having neither eaten much liver in my life nor downed spoonfuls of cod liver oil once I left Poland (for the first time). So, count this dish as medicinal.

Besides, I looked in on the geese and ducks yesterday at one reputable foie gras producing farm and they looked about as happy as any French farm animal. Make of that what you will.

[insert: the purchase of a truffle was a big deal. Like caviar, it belongs to a food group that is not part of my usual shopping orbit. Indeed, I have never purchased beluga caviar nor Perigord truffles before. But isn’t it time?



Madame at the store was trying to talk me into duck pate and I was resisting, for reasons stated above, but not resisting so much as to decline her samples of the stuff. Having chomped down her foods, I felt compelled to shake out a few Euros for something.

So I purchased my first truffle. It’s good until 2010, so I have three years to decide what to do with it.]


3. From a tiny gallery in a back street of Sarlat, love springs eternal

I ask Madame the painter this: why is it that every French artist (I'm thinking of the moderately prominent rather than someone who already commands a city audience, say in Paris) I have ever met or bought art from is a woman? I don’t especially seek out women artists, but I have a wall of painting back at the loft and they are all French and they are all done by women. Why is that?

She smiles. Yes, I know! But this is only recent. In music, too. Suddenly you see women musicians everywhere! We have exploded with our talents!

At least this is what I think she is saying. She is too southern -- bah this and bah that and I lose it after a while. Besides, I am distracted.

I'm looking at her paintings and I'm thinking of my new condo back home, which has yet to be mine in any sense of the word and I do what I usually do under the circumstances: I fall in love.

It is easy to love in France. The country has strived for centuries to perfect the art of stimulating our senses, or hormones, or something, so that love flows. I am in France most often alone. Short of pouncing on guides, waiters and whomever else I encounter in my ramblings, I have no choice but to love the wares that people place under my nose.

Last June I purchased a painting that I loved passionately in the Languedoc, though now I think it was a foolish one-night stand.

But this night I am in love. Without doubt. Here, she is holding the object of my affection:





Love, enduring love. Damp cave walls, new condo dry walls, display it as you will. April in France. Buzz of bees, roll of tractors, paintings on walls. The many shades of love.

from the Perigord Noir, in southwest France: the imprint of time

The tourist in me wakes up this morning and says: it’s not all about food. I want to step inside places and spaces that shake my soul. I want to see sights.

I want to see the caves.

This is a challenge. There are in this world only three known polychromatic prehistoric caves (the art dates back some 15,000 years).

One is near here, in Lascaux. But forty years ago, it threw the last tourist out. Unless I can come up with a fake ID attesting to the fact that I am a bona fide archeologist, I cannot go to the real Lascaux. I can only visit Lascaux II, a nearby reproduction. It wont do. I am in agreement with Oscar’s blogpost (put forth in a different context): if it’s not real, then the reaction to it is equally dishonest.

The second such cave is in Spain. I am not in Spain. Besides, that one, too, closed its doors to the mighty rush of tourism.

And then there is Font-de-Gaume, the only cave in the world with polychromatic prehistoric paintings accessible, in a limited way, to the likes of me.

180 people a day. In groups of twelve. That is all. In the summertime, you need a reservation months in advance. It’s sort of like getting tickets for John Stewart’s the Daily Show, only worse. It’s harder to get to Font-de-Gaume than it is to NYC.

Ahhhhh, the beauty of visiting the Perigord in the off off season.

I point my mini car toward Les Eyzies de Tayac, the small small town (just 15 kilometers south of where I am!) with a huge reputation: the first known bones of homo sapiens sapiens (not a repeat typo!) were found here. And, it is home to the cave with the stalactites and a bunch of other -tites, rarely seen elsewhere. Finally, it is the site of the Font-de-Gaume cave art.

Les Eyies on a warm spring day. Students at the local school take their break outdoors.



Children play, adults exhale.




It’s the kind of day where you don’t give up easily.

I go to the tourist office.
Can I get a ticket for the caves?
A shrug. You need to go to the site. Buy in advance. You wont get in now.

I pace the lovely and uncrowded at this time of the year blocks of the town. I go into a wine store and purchase the first great bottle of wine that I tell myself will grace the wine storage cooler in my new condo (a leap on my part; I have received numerous emails indicating that the condo is anything but a done deal; though if all fails, I will take my splendid bottle of wine, pop the cork and drink it prematurely, in big gulps, in a corner of a closet).

Undecided, I pace some more. I buy a huge amount of cheese because a street vendor convinces me that it will keep forever, without refrigeration. I believe her. I believe the world.




More pacing of sorts. I go to the Grotte du Grand Roc – a magnificent place where an intelligent guide tells a half dozen of us (the beauty of off season travel cannot be overestimated) all about the way these are formed (and yes, Ann, I thought of your post at numerous junctures throughout the visit):






growing every which way


It is early afternoon. I tell myself: bite the bullet. Go and beg.

I go and beg. People, I say in my best French, I want to see the caves. I want to see the art that graces their walls: the bison, the reindeer engaged in acts of love and sexual advancement, I want to see it all!
How many are you?
I am but one. Solo. Traveling alone, eating alone. I am by myself.
Okay. We will let you go with the 15:00 hour group as a thirteenth (only twelve are permitted at a time).

I hope my eyes convey my thanks.

My ticket says : get there early! I do, but my group is already waiting. Two Spaniards, one American living in France, the rest -- French.

There is a sign at the entrance: this visit is tough on claustrophobics.
Fifteen years ago I developed a case of severe claustrophobia, a post-traumatic reaction to unfortunate circumstances.

I have been trying hard to overcome it. Fifteen years ago, I could not sit in an office without a window. I could not drive through the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River.

But, two weeks ago, I took the bus that I knew would travel (for ten minutes!) underneath the Italian-Swiss Alps. And, blissfully, I fell asleep somewhere in the middle. I had wondered if that week-end in the Alps had cured me of a number of fears and foibles.

Still, a cave? For an hour? With no emergency exits (because cave people felt no need to put in emergency exits)?

It’s now or bust. I want so much to see this art!

Jean-Marie is our guide.





And let me say it straight, at the outset: the next hour, spent in that cave, is undeniably one of the best tourist-sight-viewing hours of my life.

If I were asked to recommend one important tourist attraction in this world, I’d probably say – go for the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, Venice.

But, after you have checked off all that our modern humankind, with a strong dose of good old nature, have had to offer, go (preferably with Jean-Marie as guide) to the Font-de-Gaume. Experiencing those pieces of art on the walls of the cave may change your life.

A French family is with us: a grandmother, grandfather, the middle generation, the teen son who guides grandma through dark, narrow passageways. She had been to many prehistoric caves in her days and still, you should see her face light up now! She is the most enthusiastic from our bunch. Fine, there's also me...

After a long corridor, we are before a masterpiece. The bisons – there are 82 of them in the cave and they are never aggressively positioned agaisnt each other. Our guide traces their contours, not always discernible in detail, with a beam from a flashlight.

Further down, he flashes a light onto the reindeer.


(cameras are not permitted: all of these are my photos of book photos)


The painters used color (red, black), but they also used the relief of the cave walls to give depth to the limbs and musculature of the animals.





Such a profoundly moving positioning of the beasts! A reindeer kneels down in a submissive pose. Another licks his (her?) head in what is a gesture of sublime caring.



look carefull at my arrow: do you see the snout? the eye of the smaller reindeer? You would have noticed the tongue as well, had you been in the cave

Which is the female? – I ask.
Jean-Marie is used to my questions. They are all unanswerable and not because I articulate them in French. Do you suppose the halls were temples? Did men or women paint? Was it one artist or many?

One of the women in our group muses – it’s nice to see a submissive pose on the part of the reindeer that is kneeling, if that is the male. Or of the soothing gesture of licking, if that is the male. So gentle!
Do you mean we are not gentle? – Jean-Marie smiles.

A horse is straddling another. Natural, organic movement, Jean-Marie comments.
You know, we can do all this now, with computers, we can simulate it and create paintings not unlike these. But 15,000 years ago, our ancestors were painting by the light of torches, creating depth and movement and perspective that we can now only imitate. The intelligence and artistry behind it is incredible!

He gazes at the figures, as if seeing them for the first time. With each successive image, our group gasps audibly. Ahhh! We throw out spontaneous reactions, we comment on each others’ observations.

We are enthralled.

We are also over our time limit. Jean-Marie guides us out. Thank you so much for your attitude, he tells us. It is everything.

Yes, thank you, thank you.

I go down to the town center. It is not yet 6. I have not eaten lunch, but I need a break from big time eating. I wander into a café-brasserie and I ask if they will feed me. Too early! -- madame tells me. But for you…

She brings an omelet with cepe mushrooms, a salad and a small bottle of rose. And a double noisette. I stay for a long time.

from small villages tucked into the hills and forests of the Perigord Noir in France

Plazac, my home base, has:
- a café-bar
- a restaurant
- a bakery
- a church
- an organic grocer (“bio coop”)

and that’s it.

I take that back.
‘alo?
Alo, est-ce-que je peux faire une reservation pour diner ce soir?
Non, sorry madame. I stopped serving food this winter.

So, Plazac only has:
- a café-bar
- a bakery
- a church
- and organic grocer (“bio coop”)

But, according to the village website, you can also hire:
- a carpenter (my landlord)
- an architect
- a painter

All other goods and services are to be acquired elsewhere, many kilometers down winding, forested roads.

In the very first hours in the village, I make the rounds.
At the bakery, I note that they also sell wine. If all other food procurement fails, I shall have wine and bread in the house (which, itself, is a kilometer or so outside the village).



I study the bottles.

Madame would like wine?
I’m looking for a white (there are two dozen reds, one white; she lifts out the white for me).
You will want cassis for it.

So it’s true: kir (white wine mixed with currant liqueur) is a French way of dealing with indifferent white wine.

She places a large bottle of cassis on the counter. I am about to object, but in the meanwhile, her great hunk of a dog has entered the store. For me, he has a low growl. Instinctively my hand goes out so he can have his sniff and go bother someone else.

Attendez! Do not do that! He bites hands.
I pull back, pay for the bread, the wine and cassis and retreat.

I sit down at the counter of the café-bar.



Une noisette, please. (Funny how in France, I am happy with an espresso with just a splash of milk.)

I drink it, pay the Euro and leave. Linger at a café table all you want. But at a bar counter – drink and run. Especially if you are alone.

I pass the church...





...on my way to the bio-cop, where the shelves are filled with stuff you’ll likely find at a low key co-op back home: lots of potions and alternative this and that’s and a few hardy vegetables that made it through the winter, but just barely. I buy an organic rosé to take back to the States and a few cookies that promise to be so good for me that I wont be tempted to eat them much.


Sunday morning is market day at the village of Rouffignac. It is a wet and blustery morning – the last of the cooler days here, they say. I don’t really want to cook in my imperfect kitchen of my little house on the Plazac hill. I watch people with baskets, ready for the new asparagus and old potatoes. I buy a goat cheese and head for the bakery.




Do you suppose a baguette, a boule and a chocolate croissant are enough bread product for a day?





The clock passes the noon hour.

If you want to dine among the French on a Sunday, head for a good farm restaurant in the country shortly after noon. Somehow, through impossible to reproduce now Net searches, I found Le Croquant in Fanlac, a mere 8 kilometers down a narrow, narrow strip of a road.




I drive up at 1 pm after phoning in a reservation a few days back. It’s packed. As ever, I am greeted with smiles and fusses. No country in the world looks after single women travelers as well as France does. I sit at a table that looks out at both ends of the L shaped room.





I pick the set menu, the middle one, with only seven courses: a huge tureen of soup, a home made pate (and sausage thrown in), an omelet with maybe half a dozen eggs and chanterelle mushrooms, a duck confit (and a duck filet in rabbit sauce thrown in), vegetables, salad, fresh cheese with home jams and a tart with plums. Add to it a pitcher of wine and an espresso. All that for 22 Euros, taxes and service included. All excellent. Fresh. And so very honest.

It takes me three and a half hours to eat this:


























During the meal I occasionally read a passage or two in my book about Paleolithic caves. Southwest France has two thirds of all the decorated prehistoric caves known to the world. I am heady from these descriptions, read just a handful of kilometers from the sites, while sitting in this room full of French men and women soaking up all traces of sauce with country bread. Wind gusts throw down occasional rain. Inside, it is warm, full of the fragrance of comfort food.

By the time the final dishes come, I begin to wonder if this is how the goose feels --- stuffed to capacity, giddy from the experience, the sauces, the enormity of it all. And for the millionth time I contemplate how the French can eat all this and stay fit. Why aren't they addicted to sedentary days spent in front of computer screens? No wonder their WiFi is imperfect. Most likely they hardly notice. Too busy spending Sundays in village restaurants soaking up sauces and the words of their loved ones.

Still, unlike the fattened goose who has no say in the matter, I am determined to live beyond this day and so I begin to leave a portion of the food on the plate. The owner takes it in stride. Woman eats alone. Woman hasn't the appetite of the French. Woman isn't French. Understood.

This meal stands out for me as the one about which a movie could be made.

Around the tables, life unfolds.

An older woman, significantly older than me, is putting on lipstick. No mirror. Bright red. I, as usual, forgot to put on any. But she is careful that way. And now she is looking into the distant space, thinking what? That her children and grandchildren are grown and away from the village?

Her husband has his arm on her chair, sometimes around her shoulders. He studies a piece of paper, she is still gazing. But then she smiles at him as his arm moves around her again. Love. You want to know what love is? Here, in Fanlac, at Le Croquant, I am witnessing love.





She unfolds a rain hat. Remember those? Clear and plastic, fanning out over your head, tying under the chin? She gets up and puts on her coat. Oh! She is almost blind! She walks the wrong way. He smiles, leans on his two canes and guides her to the door.








I tear up. A chick flick could not bring out the wealth of feeling that little scene demonstrates. Or maybe it’s the duck medallions in rabbit stew that are rubbing my sentimental corners. Potent foods.

And there are other scenes, equally telling. Just on the other side of my enormous bouquet, two older couples and a woman maybe in her thirties are eating together. The “younger” one has been through these meals countless times, you can tell, but today she is withdrawn. For her, there is no joy in being here. Surreptitiously, under the table, she flicks on her cell. Nothing. She puts it away. She listens to her companions (parents?) but says absolutely nothing. Her life is elsewhere. Or, she wishes it were so.




One of the older women begins to sing. Boisterously, emphasizing the last word of each phrase. She must be doing it for the younger one, she is looking at her. “Rien de rien, je ne regrette rien.” The young woman ignores her.

Such a French song. One doesn’t associate Edith Piaf (who sings this beautifully) with the Perigord, but Josephine Baker, on the other hand, was all over this place. Ignored in the States, beloved here. A fighter. Singing while dressed in banana peels. Died broke, but put a lot of oomph into her life. Bet she had no regrets.

The one thing I do not regret is being right here, in this place, at this time.

The meal ends slowly. People linger. A girl moves to her mother’s lap, conversations are quieter.




Four-thirty? Really? My first full day in the Perigord and it is whiled away at a little table with a large bouquet of spring flowers on it.