Sunflowers to Sarlat
We spent a month in a farmhouse just south of Montpon near the Dordogne in the south west of France. We didn’t use a map to get there and once arrived, we only found our way through the region by asking locals to show us the way. Because in the best tradition of travel and imagination, for that month we lived simply for the hour and the day. We just followed the sun. And we followed the wine. Each evening before dinner, we would sit out on our porch as the shadows stretched long on the cornfields across from the farmhouse. We would savor our golden glasses of Monbazillac with small nibbles of foie gras purchased from the village nearby. Then we would retire inside to enjoy a meal created on the spot from whatever had seemed lovely and edible in the market that morning. During the day we would hike long miles through the countryside or sit in the garden and read. The children would spend the afternoons swimming in the pool or playing at pirates among the gardens down near the stream. Every other day, we would bribe them with promises of crepes and drive to see places with wonderful names like Saint Emilion, Beynac and Castelnaud. In Saint Emilion we shivered in the catacombs and tasted the macarons. At Castelnaud, we waved to Beynac. Atop towering Beynac, we waved to Castelnaud and watched the sun set over the Dordogne below. We sought out Périgueux and had our afternoon coffee in the shadow of the ruins of the stern Roman tower. We visited Sarlat and had the most delicious crepes in the world just across the way from the odd and secretive cone-shaped structure in the center of the village. We found Rocamadour and walked all the way down, and then all the way back up again through the narrow, sacred streets overlooking the Alzou Canyon. On our way back up, we passed dozens of black-robed priests on their knees making their way up far more slowly, one ancient stone step at a time, murmuring the decades of the rosary as they went. With difficulty, we tracked down the Gouffre de Padirac and then thought we saw Golum hiding in the shadows as we floated by on the underground stream in our little wooden boats. After each adventure, we would return again to our farmhouse for a long, well-deserved day of rest, and the children would take up their games again in the garden. There was no phone. There was no television. There wasn’t even a radio in our farmhouse. All we had was a small cassette player. When we weren’t playing cards in the evenings, we would listen to BBC tapes for hours on end. Everyone’s favorite was "The Wind in the Willows" read to us by David McCallum. Even today, our children can quote whole passages and mimic the faintly lisping Toad: "Why strive? Why struggle?" On one particularly long day full of adventure and risk, we found the langourous seaside town of Arcachon. It was hot there, and humid. The beaches were full of slow-moving topless people and the waves barely made a sound as they limped to shore. We climbed the highest dune in Europe only to look out and wonder how the people there could think kindly of their tepid, luke-warm Atlantic, when our own Pacific made such a mighty roar even on the sunniest days. We got lost making our way back home from Arcachon. We found our farmhouse only after dark and had to listen to Wind in the Willows twice through just to make things right again. Finally, we made the great pilgrimage to Bordeaux. The city welcomed us. The cathedral was in a state of partial restoration - half of it dark and foreboding, half of it gleaming a blinding white probably far brighter than it had ever been even in its original state. We ate fish in Bordeaux and watched people shop for purses and fabric and appliances. Then we realized they were all speaking French and, for that one afternoon, we were conscious that we could not. Again, we had to escape back to our farmhouse and spend additional therapeutic hours with Toad and Badger. At last it was time to leave. The summer days were growing shorter. The sunflowers were in full bloom for miles around and we did not want to be there after the harvest left the fields bare. With great effort, we packed up our games and our tapes and our clothing and our books and our few precious bottles of Monbazillac. We headed away from our farmhouse and did not look back. Ever. A number of years have passed since that time. We are, all of us, so much older and so much wiser now. But ask any of us who were there - any single one of us - and you’ll get the same answer: There’s no use studying the maps to see if the places we visited ever really existed - if they had then, or have now, any connection to reality. The maps wouldn’t tell us a thing. We know those places existed; they were just as real as the pirates in the garden and the foie gras on the porch at sunset. That place and time was like a lovely wine - best consumed and then remembered. And like any fine vintage, the memory only gets better with age.
July 14, 2004 Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com
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