The Art of Walking: Hills and Rocks

Today's Thought

One step at a time is good walking. 

 --Chinese proverb

So is not falling over one's feet.

--Janet Strayer

Now we’ll go up into the hills north of us in France.. Nothing is more than about an hour or two from where we live. France is made up of so many different kinds of geography and micro-climates, there are different worlds to discover in a day. Nothing that currently interests me, that is. There is so much here!

Today's Discovery

Traveling along the way to a place there are other places worth stopping for and exploring. Even if you don't get to where you were going, these 'digressions' along the path are themselves paths worth taking.As the poet Theodore Roethke said, you learn by going where you have to go". And, less poetically, I'd add "...and by going where you have to learn."

  

Priory Grandmont, all photos by JS unless otherwise noted

On the way to our destination today, we stopped to see an austerely beautiful old monastery, no longer inhabited but in remarkably  good shape. Walking around let's you feel a bit of what it must have been like in its year 1011 instead of 2011. It's so COLD inside and those monks had to be barefooted. 





Next is a fine example of a Romanesque church How much of what we build will last as long? How much is built with beauty or reverence for anything in mind? 

I especially like the surprising faces and odd little people carved into the columns and over doors of so many of the medieval buildings, but never too prominently: the "lesser" beings, if you like. And of course there are the marvelous gargoyles of Middle Ages.

Even more unusual a discovery on today's trip are the Dolmens, rock structures that are more than 5,000 years old. Our ancestors in this area lived in natural caves made by erosion into the rocky hillsides. And they also built Dolmens, which were "houses” or more likely cemeteries to honor their dead that were made by hauling huge rocks together:,each rock much larger than a person.. 

We don’t know for sure how people no stronger than we are managed to lift these huge rocks, but archaeologists think they used tree trunks as levers. These Dolmens are  incredible when you come up on them, even  if you don't know anything about them,  Below is an even bigger set of Dolmens, built partly underground and with a passageway and what might have been multiple chambers. 

Perhaps not as impressive as the Dolmens, but pretty high on the list of natural rock wonders are the dolomite f all through this rocky region. Almost any hike along the Cirque de Moureze will do.

photo by J.E.M.

Another magical place in this general area was Lac du Salagou,  a large human-made lake that fits so well into its surroundings it seems always to have been there. It's a popular resort area, especially in summer. There were a few hardy individuals tenting in the area even in the chilly autumn; Many trails around the lake take you up into the hills, the heights from which one of these photos was taken. On one of the days I walked close to the lakeside, round parts of the lake, I saw a lovely horse and rider on the far bank, their duplicates reflected in the still waters of the lake. 

photo by J.E.M.

Today's Painting

shows a little adventurer saying “Onward” and sitting on a magical creature surrounded by wonderful flowers and birds and butterflies and things still waiting to be discovered

Mixed Media Painting by Janet Strayer janetstrayerart.com