LASTING IMPRESSIONS - 4 November 2011
4th November, 2011
These first few days of November remind me somewhat of the first few days in March. Then winter was loathe to leave, greeting us with a week of cold wet days before making way for spring. Now it feels like winter is in a hurry to arrive. The mistral is back and with it days of rain, sometimes in sheets that seep through the windows before trickling down the walls. So inclemency combined with my having a box-of-tissues-a-day, old-fashioned cold, have kept this writer on the couch and in editing mode. Until yesterday when I felt brave enough to venture out once more.
We decided to return to St. Remy, one of our favorite mid-sized towns, partly to lunch at L'Aile ou la Cuisse, where we had a memorable meal in the spring, partly to return to Florame to stock up on facial and bath oils and partly to drive through a series of majestic allees which Joel had then captured in their verdant finery.
Spring 2011
The autumnal harvest of colors has ramped up a couple of notches during my 3 house-bound days. Whole vineyards lit by a sudden yellowing of a vibrancy one associates more with summer fields of mustard and sunflowers. It was as if the sun had fallen from the rain-soaked sky and spread itself on the earth in augustian defiance. Elsewhere all was autumnal: swaths of crimson ivy setting houses on fire; saffron and copper and burgundy of deciduous trees vying for space with the evergreens. Yet winter will not be stayed. The poplars are already bereft of leaves, there whispery skeletons shivering in the wind. The mistral, tearing at everything, sending the torn-off leaves awhirl in the sky before dashing them to the ground where they will eventually become one with the earth.
It is this dual experience of nature that both enthralls and frightens. By dual I mean that one sees nature manifest in all its glory, but the force of nature which cannot be seen is dominant. One cannot see wind, but one sees the affect it has on that which is visible and it is unstoppable. The force of nature always gets its way. That, I suppose, is what is frightening.
We've left it too late to stop on the way to St. Remy, arriving there with just enough time to get the goodies before the shops shut at 12:30 for 3 hours. So we split up: Joel to the Joel Durand chocolate shop and I to Florame. Our separate task accomplished we reunite and try not to drool on the way to the bistro. It does not disappoint.
It's warm inside and filling up with locals, some of them transplants from a long-ago England, but mostly French, and we're all obviously thrilled to be there. We share a starter of apple and goat cheese and honey baked in phyllo. Then Joel has 3 filets of rouget on a bed of fragrant Thai rice. I, feeling the need for some red blood, go for a pot au feu of savory beef cheeks and pungent vegetables. For dessert, a slate carrying 1 caramel custard-fill profiterole, a wicked little chocolate frou-frou and a perfect morsel of some coffee-caramel-spongy thing. It was a total disappearing act.
Fortified we walked in circles which is what one does in St. Remy as in so many small towns in Provence. Once wonders if they were designed by the mistral. The rain has stopped for a while but the sky promises more. We drive back to the allees and I watch Joel at play. Looking for a break in the two-way traffic then leaping into the middle of the road, turning this way and that, the camera and he inseparable, scanning, focussing, snapping. It's a joy to watch him in his element where he, like all of us when we are "in" ourselves, becomes ageless.
Back in the car we drive back roads in silence, each of us soaking up this glorious land, alive to the gaeity of color, the madness of the mistral, the harsh rocks and gnarled trees, the insistence of nature and the endurance of humanity. Provence is tough in its beauty and you wonder at the centuries of back-breaking toil that made it possible, just barely, to survive here. We are in awe of the French spirit that fought its way through wars and famine and hard labor. You can feel how these souls have soaked into the land, much like the falling leaves.
Provence is both spiritual and pragmatic and after these few months here we can feel both the celebration of the land and an understanding of life. The people seem to me to have a deeply ingrained acceptance of the temporary nature of existence and as a result, live it to the hilt.