Estampes, part five

Sunday morning. It rained in the night, so it’s cool in the morning when I head out south on the main road, intending to drop down one of the narrow roads that take farmers to their fields. Corn and sunflower fields give over to empty fields, filled with birds lively in the cooler air: the great tit, swallows decorating the power lines that seem to run everywhere I look, tree sparrows.  I flush a pair of woodcocks, who sail off in a flurry of wings. Then I cross a small bridge, and on the other side am in a new department, the Haute Pyrenees. When I was a child, we often walked to the bridge after dinner, hopping from one side to the other, saying, “now I am in the Gers, now in the Haute Pyrenees.” There was no difference, the line entirely political. But we loved it, as we loved those evening walks.

 I look down a narrow passageway, between two corn fields, and spy two fox trotting toward me. They don’t see me right away, so I watch them through my binoculars, their long legs taking light, wary steps. And then they turn sharply and vanish into the corn.

As I near the Boues, the river that carved this valley, the land flattens out. This is an area that Odette refers to as La Plaine. The plains. It is where they grew their hay and wheat. In the summer Becky and I would help Stanis and Odette bring in the small bails of hay and straw. We’d shove in a pitchfork, then in a swoop, lift them above our head to land on the wooden cart pulled by the tractor. Stanis would arrange the bales of straw or hay, as we walked by the slow moving tractor. In the evenings, we’d return home, our hair speckled with straw, straw down our backs and in our bras. And happy.

I come to a stand of trees. I have been hearing woodpeckers on this trip, but had yet to lay eyes on a bird. There was a time when I wasn’t fond of the woodpecker in Estampes, as they drilled holes in our wooden shutters, slowly destroying them.  But now, of course, the woodpecker—a favorite. And there in this small area of dense oak trees, with its bright red flanks is the great spotted woodpecker (wish I had a photo!). Soon after in a field I spy more cattle egret, and one lone grey heron (very much like our blue heron) hunting in a field.

I pass three farmhouses, all beautifully fixed up, new shutters still closed on this Sunday morning. The tractors sit idle; not even the resident dog is there to bark at me as is usually the case. A few collared doves flutter about.

These roads I’m walking are the same roads I taught my niece and nephew to drive on. They were perfect learning roads in that 99% of the time there are no other cars. The downside is that when there was a car, there was little room for two cars to pass. So Alice or Thomas would stop, let me take over the wheel as I inched by the other car. On both sides dramatic ditches threatened to swallow a car.

I spy a hen harrier, grey-white high on a pole, then it swoops off. In a field to my right, a deer, the fifth one I’ve seen on this walk. I have seen deer in the past, but not so many. So the question is: are there more deer, or am I simply seeing them?

My return is quiet until a falcon comes zipping in overhead and slams into a magnolia tree. There’s a rumpus of squawks, then quiet. The falcon got its meal.

And I’m thinking about my lunch as well. So I drive into Mielan, the nearest town to Estampes, where there is a small Sunday market. I tell the melon man from Lectour that I want three melons, one for tonight and two for Monday. He numbers them in black ink so I’ll know which one is ripest.

I arrive at a small vegetable vendor just as he sells off the last of his lettuce. “Come to my house,” he says, “I have lots more lettuce.” So I get in his car and he takes me to his spread of a garden, overflowing with flowers, melons, tomatoes, and lettuce. He’s  retired, so this is a bit of a hobby, but he’s a gardener who likes to experiment. There are some peanut plants he hopes will grow and five corn stalks from seeds he found down by the river. I tell him he should grow sweet corn. He can’t, he tells me. When he was young, he worked inspecting farmer’s milk machines. Often the farmers would invite him for lunch. They would kill a chicken and serve it to him. Sometimes he’d find grains of corn in his chicken (someone should have cleaned their chickens better!). Corn is for chickens, he explained, handing me two large bouquets of flowers: dahlias, marigolds, black eyed Susans, gladiolas.  Flowers, whether in the US or in France, are always beautiful.

Bicycling the Gers

The road that leaves the D 146 and climbs west, uphill, is narrow and steep. It is there that Olivier and Becky are waiting for me, resting against their bicycles. “You missed seeing a Hen Harrier,” I tell them. They look less than interested as they stand in the shade of a farmhouse, a bit red from exertion and the sun. “The thing is,” I say, by way of trying to get them to care about my excitement, “is that my life is better for seeing this bird.” I’m joking and they laugh, but the truth is I kind of believe what I’ve just said.

I saw the Harrier hovering over a wide field. It looked like it was suspended from the sky itself, staying miraculous in place as it targeted the ground. There was a glint of red, and a fanned tail. Then it dropped, like a ball dropping from the sky and vanished into the grass. I figured it would take a while for it to conduct its killing business so I bicycled on, not wanting to keep my sister and brother-in-law waiting too long. 

We all shift into low gears as we prepare for the steep uphill ride that will take us up and over into the neighboring valley. The road is narrow, one-lane, gravelly, and winding. As we bike—slowly—I admire the pink and white cosmos in bloom by the side of the road, the queen anne’s lace that spreads across fields, and the acacia trees with their wispy red flowers. To our left, in the distance, we see the outline of the Pyrenees, especially the dramatic rise of the Pic du Midi. The houses of Antin thin and we’re soon surrounded by woods. There is a false summit, with a miniature valley positioned high in the hills. A few houses sprinkle the landscape, so isolated from the rest of the world. “It’s these inter-valley communities that interest me,” Becky says. And me too. The people who live here speak their own patois, live with little contact with their neighbors. It’s amazing to think of the isolation in such a busy country. Every small farm house that we pass has its own odor depending on what they are raising: Geese and ducks, an odor that is sharp in the back of the nose; beef cows, a flatter smell that mixes with the earth; milk cows, all sweetness.

Soon, we are sailing downhill, the breeze cooling the sweat under my helmet. We stop at the bottom of the hill to sit on a bench by l’Arros, a stream that flows out of the Pyrenees. We’re in the town of St. Sever, known for its Abbey.

St. SeverOn the return we take the D38 toward Villecomtal, then head back east on narrow back roads. I see a buzzard soaring over a field. It’s possible to get lost in these back roads, some of which dead end in fields. But we’ve all biked and driven them enough that we know to turn left or right at the statue of the virgin Mary, or at the grey house.

My grandmother loved taking this road through the woods to visit Villecomtal. They went with horse and buggy, she would tell me, taking the whole day for the visit. And then an uncle of hers owned a small shop in town, a shop that sold bonbons. There, she would get to eat as many candies as she pleased. What would she think of her grandchildren bicycling this same route in the heat of day? She would think we were nuts.

At a turn in the road, Olivier and Becky are waiting for me, though I had told them to go on, so I could stop and look at birds. They are snacking on blackberries, growing by the side of the road. And, Becky wanted to be sure that I saw the lamas in the field, napping in the sun. Lamas, like the donkey, are new to the area.

Becky leaves her bike and wanders to the side of the road to pee. She unzips her pants, and begins to crouch when she leaps into the air, screaming. In all the acres of land, in all the miles of road, she has decided to crouch to pee, right over this:

Fox and Chickens

Francis Morlass arrives in the morning to check the trap he has set for the fox, which has killed a few of Odette’s chickens. The plan is to catch it in a have a heart trap and then shoot it. I’m on the side of the fox, of course. Not that I want it to take Odette’s chickens, but I want it to live, to thrive. So to rid me of my wild animal love Odette tells me stories of how destructive the fox can be. There was the time she came into the chicken coop and found all nineteen of her chickens dead. “A massacre,” she explains. I get it that tending to chickens every day would make me want to protect them, but more—they are worth something, as a meal for Odette.

Almost every morning on my walk I see fox. They work the freshly cut fields of hay. I stood and watched one stalk and pounce, all four feet lifting off before it landed on its prey. But so far the chicken-stealing fox is not trappable. He’s sprung the trap twice but has not yet been taken. I’ll continue to quietly side with the fox and publicly hope that Odette’s chickens are safe. Both of these things can be true.

Francis is outdoors a lot and loves the natural world. He’s about an inch shorter than I am, but square, like he was built to move things around. He has a quick smile and like most Gascons, can stand and chat forever. Odette tells him I am looking for birds, and right away  he says: we see birds here that we never saw before. He is not the first to say this to me, so I’m beginning to think there’s a real shift in the area. I ask if there is a reason for this. They both agree that it is because there’s less use of pesticides in the fields. Neither say anything about global warming.

find the foxWhat is new is the cattle egret that I see accompanying the cows in the fields. Francis tells me that Damian shoots at the egrets (one explanation for why I find the birds here so skittish) to scare them off. But Francis likes them: they eat flies. He has a lot less flies since the egrets have arrived. The other new birds are the kingfisher, a bright blue, practically turquoise on the back. There’s the Hoopoe, he tells me. I look it up later and see a black and white bird with a long bill and a dramatic crest.  I want to see one! And the oriole. As he tells me this, the bright yellow bird lands at the top of the fig tree in front of us. I point it out to them, and they both say, “yes, the oriole loves to eat figs.” So do I. So I walk over to the tree and take a fig to eat as I begin my morning walk.

Into the Woods, Estampes

Before I head left, uphill and into the woods I stop at the small graveyard. It’s walled in, with a metal gate. There’s a watering can that I fill from the spigot, to water the diplandenia, which my sister bought when she visited in April. The flowers are still in vibrant pink bloom in front of the blocky grey tomb that is the last one on the northern side of the cemetery. In addition to the flowers, there are two hideous ceramic flowers—somewhat required decorations—that rest on top of the flat, wide tomb. Most of the granite tombs are stacked with tokens of love like these ugly flowers, from friends, and relatives showing their grief through these objects. Mixed in with those brimming with love, are those graves that are seemingly abandoned, weeds sprouting nearby, or vines crawling over the tomb. Every year I vow to come and tend to those that are starting to crumble, as if the entire village might be my family.

I sit in front of our family tomb and read the names of those inside: Montegut, Ragner, Rogers. Montegut is my great grandfather. Ragner is my grandmother (though not my grandfather, who was buried near Pittsburgh) who grew up in Estampes, then married a Swede born in the States. Rogers is my mother and father, whom we buried in 2005, then 2007. I remember when we added the granite plaque with the name Rogers, the shock of seeing my own name, of realizing this is a place I will rest as well.

I leave the cemetery, surprised I am not crying. It’s hard to take stock of when intense grief subsides, but somehow, miraculously it has. Time helps, is what friends told me, though I never believed them. It feels miraculous to be on this side of sadness.   

And yet time has not taken the edge off of Odette’s grief when she tells me, as she does every summer, about when her father died. She was fourteen. It was 1943. Her father fell down the stairs, was rushed to the hospital. It was a ruptured intestine, is what she guesses now. Peritonitis. They operated in Tarbes, then brought him home. Five days later he was dead. Like that. Every time she tells the story she folds into tears.

I turn uphill and pass Elises’ broad, beige house. Its windows are shuttered, the courtyard quiet. Five years ago she left her animals, two cows, some rabbits and a flock of ducks to live with her son an hour away. Visiting Elise was a summer ritual, one our mother forced us into as kids. There was the fun of the animals—Elise always had baby rabbits, or baby chicks and she loved her animals in a way the other farmers did not. She is the one who hand milked a cow with a deformed tongue who was unable to suckle from its mother. And she always had fruit trees—there was the year we spent hours up in the cherry tree gorging on the ripe fruit. But at Elises’ there was always some animal part—and I mean the liver or heart—draped over a pan in the open fire in her kitchen. Flies swirled through the window. The smell was often a bit hard to overcome. I once took a friend from Manhattan to visit Elise and she said—cruelly, I thought—that if you took Elise and plopped her down on 50^th and Broadway she would be a bag lady. She had the same weathered look of New York’s homeless. The same lumpy legs held together with gray stockings, and a tattered dress. But what I saw when looking at Elise was hard work and heart break. Her husband was crushed by a tractor three months after their son Andre was born (this in the mid 60s). So Elise raised her son, and took care of her mother Pauline. She is tough and proud, and refused help to build a bathroom inside her house; she always had an outhouse and never had hot running water. Through the winter, the heat from the kitchen fireplace warmed her.

I walked past Elise’s, then past the Arnou’s, whom I still think of as the Parisians though they moved to Estampes in the early 70s. Then I was above the village, looking down on a sweep of fields. In front of me were woods, dense with oak and locust trees. I was, of course, looking for birds. A nuthatch. A brown creeper. I spied a flash of blue and thought the large bird might be a jay. But it was pretty quiet in the woods, and the birds felt skittish compared to the birds at home.

I saw a few cars parked by the side of the dirt road. These were the cars of people hunting mushrooms, cepes, the large boletes, and girolles. In my early twenties I lived in the house in Estampes for a long stretch of months. I spent hours in the woods looking for cepes, the brown-capped, meaty mushroom prized by gourmands. Those days, anyone could roam the woods but because people from out of town come to poach, you now need a permit. (I wrote about mushroom hunting in an essay published in a lovely anthology titled France: A Love Story.)

A car approached and the driver came to a halt, turned off the engine and hopped out to shake hands with me. He was older, wearing blue work pants held snug with a belt, and a checked shirt. He was a slender man, his forearms strong and tanned. I did not recognize him, which surprised me.

How is your hunt? he asked.

I explained I was hunting for birds, not mushrooms. And I realized as I said this that a walk without a hunt—birds, mushrooms, flowers—isn’t as fun as one where I am looking for something. The hunt provides direction, small destinations.

What sort of birds, he wanted to know.

Anything, I said, I was from the States, so anything would please me. This was completely true.

Oh, the Americans, he said. You’ve been doing work on your house.

Right.

He told me about the buzzard up the hill. Some farmers don’t like the buzzard, but it’s a good bird, he said.

How was your hunt? I asked.

He said that two weeks ago there was a lot of rain, perfect for mushrooms. They were sure to have a good crop. But then it rained again. And everything went a bit soft. The slugs were having a good time of it, he said. We laughed. Then off he drove and I continued uphill. The woods were calm, the light speckling through the trees. From time to time there was an opening, a small field where farmers grazed their cows. It was humid for the southwest of France, and I could feel the weight of the sun as it rose higher in the sky.

Two men walked toward me.  They were both about my age, and carried wicker baskets. The one man looked familiar.

“You are a Ricourt,” I said. It was a good guess as it seems that half of the village are Ricourts, the wealthy baker family.

Oh, he said, and took off his hat, leaning in to kiss me. I could feel the sweat from his cheek cool against my own as we greeted each other.

The hunting was ok, but not great. Yesterday was better. Tomorrow it would be over. It made me think of how these farmers approach life, with a directness about the loss, the births and deaths. This is the way it was. Nothing to lament, just an observation. And we said goodbye.