Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James (7 page)

I was taken aback by her recollection of us, and felt chastened for my unkind thoughts about the tortoise. At the same time, a momentary feeling of dread assailed me. We were so tired that we could barely speak and had looked forward to a quiet evening of solitude in our time-tunnel hotel. Guilt welled up like the water at a mineral springs: why not embrace the moment and share our li want to light a candle9HChves with the lonely, ungainly tortoise?

HYDROLOGY AND WET-NURSES

By the time the fresh, pink Cure River trout had arrived pan-fried in butter, we’d learned many things. Our fellow diner was from Auxerre in northern Burgundy. She’d lived in Paris for ten years and, since leaving, hadn’t gone back once or missed The City of Blight, as she put it. We couldn’t help wondering why she felt embittered about Paris, but the thought left us as she poured out her passion for the Morvan. An avid hiker, she knew the Morvan’s trails in rare sunlight and frequent darkness. “I carry a flashlight, food, a gas burner, water, and a tent,” she said through missing teeth. “In the Morvan, you never know where you’ll find supplies or a bed.”

The remark reminded me of the wilderness treks I took as a teenager, not something I needed to repeat in France, even without rattlesnakes and bears.

The garrulous tortoise’s knowledge of the Morvan turned out to be encyclopedic. It was hard to imagine that someone who appeared to be so marginal and unkempt could in fact be so well educated and articulate. Her low, quiet voice accompanied us through succeeding courses as night fell and the rushing river grew louder. While we savored cheeses and dessert, she gave us a potted geopolitical, demographic, natural, economic, and cultural history of the region we would be crossing for the next ten days.

The Morvan isn’t a mountain range, but rather a granite plateau that stretches south from Avallon about 45 miles to an abrupt end at Saint-Léger-sous-Beuvray. Erosion, said the tortoise, munching a slice of bread, and geological “movements” make the plateau feel mountainous. At just under 3,000 feet, the Morvan’s peaks weren’t exactly the Himalayas. However, because they frown over gorges and valleys, there is drama in the landscape.

The Morvan had always been remote, impoverished, and sparsely populated, she remarked. In the 19th century, most wet-nurses in Paris were
nourrices morvandelles
, driven from places like Cure to the big bad city, their breasts swollen with milk that they couldn’t afford to give to their own children. These
nourrices
also reared Parisian children at home in the Morvan. Such farmed infants were nicknamed
les petits Paris
. Bucking worldwide trends, the Morvan’s economy had actually worsened in the last century as timber resources and mines ran out. The whole depressed region had been declared a park in 1970 in hopes of promoting tourism and stemming the demographic outflow. The results were unexpected.

“Fewer fulltime residents than ever,” noted the tortoise, “and lots of vacation homes and nonresident foreigners. You’ll see. The Morvan has the highest ratio of secondary residences in the whole of France.”

Meanwhile, she advised, we should prepare ourselves for trails that were little more than riverbeds filled by constant rainfall. The Morvan holds another dubious record: it is France’s wettest region, with rain or snow falling on average every second day. “That’s why the Celts liked it,” she grinned, a jack-o’-lantern now. “There was plenty of clean water, sacred springs everywhere, wood for building settlements and fortifications.” She raised her water glass, indicating the wine on our table. “They didn’t grow grapes, you know—the Romans brought in the wine. And that was the Gauls’ downfall. With one amphora of Greek, Etruscan, or Roman wine you could buy a Gallic slave. Not even the Druids could resist. They enslaved each other and sold each other off for wine. Celtic peoples have a genetic pred at 1,700 feet above sea level st said.isposition to alcoholism.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard the claim, and, unfortunately, it rang true to me. I found it refreshing that a French person would speak so candidly, without fear of being un-PC, about her ancestors.

The shy owner of the hotel leaned on the door jamb. She remarked that many of her clients were indeed heavy drinkers. When it came to demographics, the hotel’s name, “de la Poste,” spoke volumes. It would soon no longer make sense: the post office across the street was set to close. Since her arrival in 1961 from nearby Saint-André-en-Morvan, the number of farms in Cure had spiraled down from fifty to two. “They were subsistence farms, and the produce was good,” she explained. “Now they’re big, subsidized sheep and cattle farms, factory farms.”

Sadly, she didn’t see the irony. “Poste” referred not to mail but to the stagecoach inns that had once dotted the Continent. They’d disappeared. Now the post offices were disappearing too, and the little old hotels misnamed for them.

Danielle also told us how the local Madonna of Light got her name—from water. Abundant rainfall percolated through decomposed-granite soil, forming creeks and giving rise to the Cure and the Yonne rivers, both big tributaries to the Seine. Starting 150 years ago the powers-that-be in Paris had built reservoirs and hydro-electric plants to control the Seine and electrify the capital, using the Morvan’s resources for distant city folk. The Madonna was there to commemorate the electrical substation hidden in tunnels beneath the mountain we would be hiking over in the morning.

“She’s also there with her magical powers to protect the area from flooding,” added the tortoise with a sardonic grin. “If you believe in such things.”

“Plenty do,” said Danielle.

“Oh, they believe in that and a lot of other things,” said the tortoise placidly, without a hint of sarcasm. “Everyone around here is searching for something—a saint’s relic, a Druid’s sacred dolmen that has nothing to do with Druids, a hilltop with the right orientation and magnetism for building a Buddhist shrine. The beauty and quiet isn’t enough, not for them.” She shrugged and smiled. “To each his own.”

PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

A cocky rooster provided our 6 A.M. wake-up call. There wasn’t room for us to do our usual morning exercises, so we cracked stiff joints and went out to stretch our legs and explore the village.

The church was closed, but the churchyard stood open. The tombs seemed well cared for. An inscription on one related to a woman who’d lived from 1911 to 1992 and had won the
Médaille d’or de la famille française
—the Gold Medal of the French Family. It spoke of the demographic politics applied after the decimation of the populace in World War One, a policy quietly continued today. This particular mother had borne many children, been subsidized by the government, and awarded a medal for her exemplary breeding. Her maiden name was the same as that of the current owners of the most important piece of property in the village, a family, we were given to understand, not well-loved nowadays.

Carved on the obelisk-shaped village war memorial were the names of dozens of soldiers from World War One, three from World War Two, and one deportee—probably a Jew or undesirable sent to the death camps. Every French village has a similar memorial, usually an obelisk, the age-old symbol of ptext-align: justify; } p.indentedoower. In France it also symbolizes the secular state. The memorials told the same story of slaughter in 1914–1918 that led to the
débacle
, capitulation, and Nazi Occupation of 1940. World War Two had been a continuation of World War One, the so-called Great War. Great for the arms business, among others.

Not everyone in France had capitulated and collaborated. The Résistance had found its homeland here, in the Morvan’s impenetrable black forests, which in 1944 stood between retreating Nazis and safety in Germany.

As we settled down to our
petit déjeuner
, the grandfather clock in the hotel dining room rang eight times, not once, not twice, but thrice. “It’s always ahead by half an hour,” Danielle reassured us. “If it runs on time, I’ll start to worry.”

We tucked in and tanked up on watery coffee. I was sorry to be leaving but, for many reasons, elated to start walking again.

Outside, the stolid tortoise awaited us. “Will we see you tonight at Marigny l’Eglise?” Alison asked encouragingly, referring to a village several valleys south.

The tortoise shook her head. “I probably won’t make it that far.” She measured her words. “I’m in no rush. After Marigny my route diverges from yours.” She cracked her jack-o’-lantern smile. “Do you have water and lunch?”

Water we had. But there were no provisions in Cure. “Lunch?” Alison mused.

“My wife doesn’t actually need to eat,” I said. “She’s a stag-horn fern. Anyway, the
Topo Guide
says there’s a café in Saint-André-en-Morvan. That’s a couple of hours down the trail. We’ll be all right.”

The tortoise smiled wider, shook our hands, and lumbered in to breakfast.

Upstream from the pink millhouse, the Cure splits, rushing around isles of poplar and birch. I drank in the scent and remembered Danielle’s parting comment. I’d asked about our destination, Marigny l’Eglise, ten miles south and six miles beyond the village where she was born. “I’ve never been to Marigny,” she’d said wistfully, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve never even walked over the hill back home to Saint-André.”

To me that seemed astonishing. Was it lack of curiosity? Clearly Danielle wasn’t lazy. Maybe she just didn’t like to walk, or didn’t have the time or feel the need.

Time we had made for our walk, though it might ruin us financially. Time, in the form of calendar days, appointments, e-mails and telephone calls, was already beginning to melt, like Salvador Dalí’s pocket watch.

I thought of the many other deep-rooted Europeans I’d met over the years, people who stay close to home, who hardly know the village across the valley, let alone the one over the ridge. How different we were. No matter how long I lived here, I would never be like them, at least not in the realm of being root-bound. Having winged my way from San Francisco to San Diego, New York City to Providence and Boston, and from there to Milan and Rome before settling, for the last quarter century, in Paris, my understanding of permanence was slight. And here I was, on the road again, and as happy as the proverbial bivalve.

“DONKEY HOTEY”

Our looping trail mounted through spongy woodlands, following a kidney-shaped reservoir carved into the hillside. Water ran down spillway Saint-BrissondChs and rose underfoot from springs. In the hamlet of Narbois a homeowner clipping his hedges seemed startled to see us. He said there were in his village precisely fifteen inhabitants, three vicious dogs, 237 cows, a pair of lively jackasses, and, as we could see, views galore.

We coasted downhill and came upon the donkeys—in flagrante. When the male caught sight of us, he dismounted and brayed. Gnashing his long, yellow donkey’s teeth, he did his damnedest to scare us away. “Springtime for jackasses,” I said, capturing his bray on my digital audio recorder. I played it back, thinking he’d find it amusing. But the donkey went berserk instead, bucking and braying while galloping along the fenced roadside, his eyes rolling and nostrils foam-flecked.

“Goodness,” I exclaimed as he tried to nip me. “Don’t be a horse’s ass.”

“That was cruel,” Alison scolded, struggling to stifle laughter. I wasn’t sure what she was referring to: the teasing with the audio player or the fact that I had interrupted the donkeys’ passionate embrace.

“Oh, put your gums away,” I joked. I played the recording again, and both of us bent double with absurd hilarity. “Whenever we get tired or worried,” I said, mopping the tears from my eyes, “I’ve got a secret weapon: Donkey Hotey.”

SAVED BY LES PETITS PARIS

It might’ve been the rain or an attempt to confound hikers. The trail markings suddenly disappeared. We navigated by sight. Approaching the perched village of Saint-André we noticed someone had vandalized several stone crucifixes marking trail junctions.

At the top of a looping grade we entered Saint-André-en-Morvan, the place Astérix at the start of our journey had described to us as “quintessential Morvan,” something we simply had to see. The rain petered out and a surprisingly scorching sun blazed down. Another toppled crucifix stood near the village café, which doubled as a general store. The door was locked. I cupped my hands and called out. A young man thrust his head from the building next door. “It’s closed,” he said. “The owner had to leave.” He drew shut the window. I called after him. He reappeared, hesitant. “No, there’s nowhere for you to get coffee or food anywhere.” This time he pulled the shutters noisily and slammed the window. A bolt slid into place behind the door.

Great. Very friendly.

“The guidebook says there’s drinking water in the square,” I sighed. We started climbing. “Inventory time. We have energy bars and some fancy chocolates,” I called out. Alison was taking her 345th photo of the day. She seemed unconcerned. The walking stag-horn fern. Air and water. But the water was now gone.

A medieval church clamped its stony shell to the hilltop. It had an unusual open narthex, the same kind of enclosed, hooded porch as at Vézelay. Carved into the plaster walls were crude representations of churches, as if pilgrims or school children long ago had wanted to draw their own village church. Iron bars kept us out. We peered through at a barren nave. Once upon a time, in the bad old days, peasants and serfs were not allowed into country places of worship. They had to stand in the narthex or on the porch, lest their muddy clogs and unclean souls pollute the holy, land-owning atmosphere within.

“This time I really did want to light a candle,” Alison said.

Mild alarm bells rang. Candles? I was more concerned about water and food.

M">passéisme incarnate.dChUp in a pasture behind the church, a lone cow mooed. A fountain played on the square. A sign read “not potable.” The words of Astérix came back to me.
Ah, Saint-André-en-Morvan, plus Morvan que ça et tu meurs
. Any more Morvan than Saint-André and you die.