Mountain Time

the view from my window: Maison D'Isabe, Arguenos, Haute Garronde, France.  

I am on holiday. I am living an American Dream, at least a middle-class fantasy.
I am for two weeks living in the Pyrenees mountains of southern France, a 19th century stone farm house hung with ancient family photos and furnished with comfortable antiques. There's a sunny terrace out front where we take our breakfasts, overlooking a mountainside of bellowing tan cows and invisible, roaring stags. The radio receives nothing but Rachmaninoff and "The Fountains of Rome" and "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." The fridge is full of exquisite butter, apricots, pears, black-olive confit. There are bottles of Bordeaux and Boujolais and St. Emilion, fizzy water and  apple liqueur (which is nasty.)

Miguel Angel 

For almost a week my daughter and son in law were here with me, on a whirlwind holiday from their busy lives in Washington, D.C. Here, too, was Miguel Angel, my friend from Paris. He was our interpreter -- he is native to Mexico, but speaks perfect French. None of the rest of us speaks any at all... or we didn't when we arrived.
We went all together to Lourdes, a Catholic healing spa/Disneyland. We went to Pic du Midi, a heart-stopping drive to the tippy-top of the Pyrenees, where the Tour de France bicycle race comes to a head. We looked into the night sky, and saw the Milky Way. We hiked up the mountain and saw lizards, cows, eagles, a badger. We saw the hand-prints of prehistoric children on cavern walls, (were they humans? Was this artwork what made them into people?) and a medieval church built with the scraps of the nearby ruined Roman town, (sic transit gloria) that in the shadow of the hulking monastic cathedral perched on the hillside above (the monuments to triumphant Christianity now government-run tourist commodities in an extremely secular society.) Thousands of years of humanity, all that remains of individual lives now long lost to history.

Libby and  Dave 

I love Spain, but I must admit to France's cultural hegemony. It is as cultured place as I have ever been, elegant, tasteful, delicious and expensive.
Sadly, even its perfect Autumn days are still subject to the passage of time.
Miguel left first. (Such a beautiful man, why do my friends all live so far away?)
 Today I drove Libby and David to Toulouse to get their airplane home. (dear God, when will I see her again? I love her so much!) 
I do not like cities, or traffic. I did not linger long.
And so they all are gone now, and I am here alone.
The maison is no less lovely, or old, or resonant of the family that lived here for generations. If there are ghosts, they don't bother with Americaines.
I can stay another whole week if I want to. Paddy is doing just fine at home.
I feel guilty for this. I do not hold down a job. I don't go to work every day, or have a limited number of vacation days each year. My entire life, in a way, is a holiday. I don't deserve to be here.
I should do something spectacular and creative with this splendorous solitude. I should outline a new story, or start a new book, or draw pictures.
But I think I may just think with it.
Consider how much time remains, and what is possible. How healthy am I?
I must consider the things I dream of, and how much work and risk and sacrifice I am willing to take on to pursue those dreams... am I getting a bit too old to be pitching myself into plans without set time limits?

the room where I am thinking 

I am lazy -- maybe it's that amazing butter. (we never use butter at home, the olive oil is so good!) A friend in Madrid writes with an intriguing proposal, but it looks like so much work... so much shmoozing, so many people..!
 I am lazy, or depressed. I want to be alone.
The clock ticks. None of us knows how much time remains, how long the sun will keep shining on the terrace, how long the Bordeaux will hold out, how soon we have to get back on the plane and head out across the concrete and into the grey sky.
Into forgetfulness, into history.  

The Swallows Have Flown

The tooth was abcessed, it spread infection up into my sinuses and into my tonsils. I got pretty sick pretty fast, and the dentist finally pulled the molar. It was awful. I passed out in the chair. I scared the dentist!

And now, after two courses of antibiotics and many hours of sleep, I am getting better. I feel like I lost the first half of the month, as well as the back half of my mouth.

This is a truthful year for me. I have taken three good hikes -- the Camino Ingles in February, the Peñalba trail in July, the little slice of Camino Madrid in August. Two of them left me beat-up and battered for days after. I tire faster now, and stay that way longer. I am not the Iron Woman I used to be.

But today, today I feel like myself. In the morning light we loaded up the dogs and went out to the Camino de Galgos and walked a good 10 kilometers along an old canal, past a fox den and under the new high-speed railway line. The dogs love that hike. We do, too. The light out there is yellow and soft, and the sky puts on spectacular cloud shows. No one else ever goes there. We have it to ourselves.

The songbirds are flocking. The swallows are gone from the barn. This week, the leaves on the chestnut trees turned yellow.

At long last, Alfredo the Leña Man delivered 2 tonnes of firewood inside the back gate. Pilgrims arrived, Hungarians and Germans and Italians. We stacked the wood in the shed, in stages, over time. It was hot, sweaty, righteous work. The heat here is dry, so I find breaking a sweat is not so terrible. It drips off and disappears. It doesn´t make me all yicky-sticky.  

The pilgs had to eat strange food, but they don´t care.
I have nothing profound to report.
Life is good out here on the plains.

Practically Perfect

I love a good ending. I love a good beginning even more.
And here it is, the first day of September. A bit of both. All the abundanza of the end of summer, the lush gardens, the grapevines coming on strong, a sky full of thunderheads. But when I am outside at 1 a.m. with Orion and Mars and the stars, it's almost cold.
Crickets sing in the dark. On the little boom-box we play Muddy Waters and Jussi Bjorling. One speaker points out onto the patio, and one into the kitchen. Someday we will get a proper stereo. We are kinda afraid what the dust here would do to a proper stereo. We will stick with the cheap option until they stop manufacturing these things. Then, well.
Silence is great. But everyone should have some "Long Distance Call" on September first, when the night is warm and the little string of solar bulbs switches itself on, the white wine comes up from the bodega at the just-right temperature. The end of a day of planting out the Fall crop of kale and chard and lettuce, topping up the dog- and chicken-feed, finally paying back Julia with a box of eggs for her many tons of apples, plums, membrillo and advice. (Her hens stopped laying when the men started re-roofing their house. Hens are touchy critters, and this time of year they molt -- they change their feathers, they stop laying. Bob Canary changes his feathers, and stops singing. Everybody needs a holiday.)
The Spaniards are back at home, back at school. All last week the trains were full, Moratinos and Sahagun teemed with out-of-towners, but their numbers slowly slackened. The Spanish summer madness winds down. The European Camino madness winds up. More and more foreigners show up now, thinking they won't have to compete for lodgings and dinner-tables. There's litter on the trails. A paint-can philosopher worked-over our labyrinth in the last couple of days, advising passing pilgrims that "The Silence Speaks."
(The Silence has spoken there for centuries without any help from dumb-asses with spray paint.)
And so it continues.
The Peaceable was busy in the past week. Patrick and I took turns going to Madrid to help a friend who's feeling low. I attended an Anglican Eucharist, which is always utterly delicious. We hosted pilgrims here, met some fine people, heard some great guitar music, ate  razor clams and sardines and drank some good vino.
It is tempered by the troubles of our friend. And Momo Cat going on another walkabout. And my own issues. I developed a toothache at the end of the week, and lost a good portion of the weekend to pain and pain-killers. Worrisome things. Paddy made lovely soup from beans and bacon. I harvested the tomatoes out back and made the year's finest gazpacho. Tortillas, salsa, rice, easy things to eat. I am well cared-for.   
And today... today was textbook late summer. The morning dog-walk was lovely, the dogs all had good runs and tumbles, almost no blood was shed, nothing was killed, we ran into no hunters, and all returned panting and well-aired. We went into town and found almost everything on the list -- alas, no dentist available until Thursday! Out on the camino I spread manure and calendula seeds and lots of water round the base of the Phil Wren Memorial Tree, and discovered the mess at the labyrinth.
My tooth did not hurt so much, long as I didn't use it for anything.
We made naan bread, a weekly team event. We read books, sitting out on the patio with dog noses poking at us. In the silence of the afternoon I went all round the walls of the house next door calling for Momo, just in case he was locked inside one of their outbuildings. (Mo has a distinctive bourbon-and-cigarettes sort of meow, and he answers when I call him.)
No Mo. How tiresome.
I took a nap.
The sun went low. The dogs lolled and wrestled on the patio. We had naan and gazpacho out there, listened to Steely Dan on the speaker, talked about old friends, and the old house that's for sale downtown.
And just as Paddy wound up a discourse on Heideggar, we heard a noise.
A yowl. A yip. Unmistakeable. Paddy's eyes met mine, and we both gaped and grinned.
Momo Cat, up on the barn roof, shouting to be let into the house. Home again, the bad cat!
And so our evening is complete, our family circle re-connected. We put the hound dogs to bed in the barn, and opened up the front door so Mo and Tim and Rosie could join us in the gloaming.
Beauty, it was.
The music ended on the box. The crickets took up the tune.
And now, upstairs, I can hear Patrick snoring. Down here by my feet, Tim snorts in his sleep, too.
My tooth hurts, yeah. But everything is so fine.
Even with a bad tooth, I have to say it: I live in the best place in all the world.