FOREVER GREEN - 10 October 2011
10th October, 2011
Apart from the fact that yesterday was our granddaughter's 3rd birthday we will always remember it as the greenest day of the year.
Shortly after breakfast we took off for the Sunday market in Coustellet and after browsing and buying a few provisions we decided to head the car in any old direction and see where it took us. Today the roulette wheel stopped on neither rouge ou noir but on vert: the green of Fontaine de Vaucluse. Make that plural: greens. We don't recall ever seeing so many shades of green, not even in Spring, not even in my native England, well, perhaps...
The day was luscious, full sunshine with heat in it, tempered by the mistral which, in this village, perhaps because it is surrounded by cliffs on 3 sides, was more of a playful breeze. In fact vaucluse means closed valley and fontaine means spring (could it be a double entendre that makes for so much green?) and this spring is the biggest spring in France and the fifth largest in Europe. It is also the source of the River Sorgue and a mighty river it is, with its lush underwater vegetation providing the most virulent green, frankly the sort of color that when you see it in a photograph you might assume it has been photoshopped.
We probably spent a couple of hours there, wandering, sitting, gazing. One could imagine that in the height of summer the pedestrian traffic is shoulder-to-shoulder, but on this Indian Summer day, although these were certainly tourists, they were of a number and nature that gave the village a relaxed and pleasant pace, as if the meander of we humans matched the meander of the river, our spirits lifted by the sheer beauty of nature. It didn't hurt that we enjoyed sharing a cone of salted caramel and coffee ice-creams, sitting on a stone wall by the water.
If we hadn't had such a late breakfast we would have like to sit in one of the several riverside restaurants enjoying good food along with the view. As it was, with the last lick of ice-cream we got up and began our usual poking around back streets and lanes. There was much to see:
But perhaps the most surprising and satisfying visual was the constant shimmy of the mistral-stirred trees whose many shades of green seemed to multiply with the movement and gave us the pleasant illusion that spring had arrived.
On the way back to Bonnieux we talked about the abundance of Provence; certainly its food and climate, but also the ceaseless supply of backroads, each one leading to a new discovery, many a mere jaunt away, none more than a day trip. And each of these little trips serves up such a bounty of visual and physical pleasure that you can be sated and satisfied to call it a day and be home in 30 minutes.
By the time we get home the air is chilly and the apartment feels it. We roast the vegetables and salmon we bought at the market and look balefully at the fireplace. We can't find the email from Sharon and Paul telling us which way the wind should be blowing to avoid smoke. Finally we agree there could be no harm in lighting a bit of newspaper and a couple of sticks of kindling and finding out which way the wind doth blow tonight. We're in luck! We pile on some logs and sit talking about the day, about Provence, about leaving home, about our kids, about what it's like to live in a foreign country where we know no-one, to talk only with each other for weeks on end, to at times hate each other for this and to love being able to be this free and forgiving. We are no longer the juicy ripe fruit we once were, but we are well-seasoned and hearty. And while we no longer take the wild risks of youth we're still willing to risk embracing the unknown. The former was life-threatening. The latter life-affirming.