Fragile existence

A few hours ago, I drove down to the village of Pont-en-Royans to drop in on my local physician, Dr Xavier Limouzin. He was as proud as a successful angler to have guided me wisely, over a period of several years, into an expert medical context in which early traces of prostate cancer have been detected. At a practical level, this means that I'll no doubt endure an operation in the near future. My youthful mustached doctor (a distinguished member of the local fire brigade, and an amateur of antiquated motor cycles) leaned back in his armchair and allowed himself to be carried away by the apparent beauty of such a surgical intervention: "It's an amazing two-man team effort. The urologist operates with a colleague. They showed me a fabulous video that demonstrates how it's done." In watching Dr Limouzin describe with enthusiasm the work of his specialized colleagues, I had the impression that I was maybe missing out on some kind of superb Spielberg production, and that I should order immediately the DVD through Amazon. "The only access they need is a tiny set of holes in the lower abdomen. Once they've got their tiny instruments inside, in the prostate region, it's beautiful to see the way they operate, as a team." OK, we're surely talking about a couple of Olympic ice artists such as Torvill and Dean, or maybe a Russian/American pair of astronauts repairing their space station. Maybe, I thought, this expert couple fiddling around so aesthetically in the region of my old-fashioned sexual apparatus might be attempting to create an artificial offspring, possibly a monster.

After bidding farewell to my adorable doctor, I was halted by a minor catastrophe at the exit of the village of Pont-en-Royans, on the road up to Gamone.

While I was chatting about prostate surgery with Dr Limouzin, a giant rock had fallen down from the Baret mountain (which I observe from my bedroom window). After the impact, which would have surely squashed any automobile that happened to be moving up the road at that instant, the rock disintegrated into several fragments, one of which halted on the other side of the road, while the others jumped over the parapet and descended into the Bourne. As my friend Natacha put it, with what I see as a Marseilles sense of judgment, when I told her this anecdote on the phone: "Obviously, for God, your hour of doom has not yet come." Thanks Natacha, thanks God.

Seriously, life is fragile. Isn't it? Beautifully fragile. That's what makes the whole thing so amazing... whichever way you look at it. Meanwhile, if I were serious, I would start to think about looking at things from the point of view of those two surgical artists whose skill consists of being able to eliminate the bugs and other cellular intruders in my lower belly.

Shit, when I think about it, if Limouzin's conversation had bored me, and I had left five minutes earlier, my fucking prostate might now me some kind of French pâté spread out over the macadam on the road from Pont-en-Royans up to Gamone.

I love life! It's so unpredictable. Lively, as they say.

Happy new year

I take this opportunity of conveying my best wishes for 2008 to readers of the Antipodes blog. Over the last few weeks, I've been more absent-minded than usual (primarily because of a relatively banal health problem that suddenly hit me), and I somehow or other forgot completely that my friends Tineke Bot and Serge Bellier had invited me to spend the evening at their place. So, last night, I was curled up in front of my fireplace trying to digest the rather indigestible words of Nicolas Sarkozy's new-year greetings to his compatriots, when the phone rang. It was Serge informing me that they were waiting for my arrival. Now, while it's embarrassing to turn up late in such circumstances, it was suddenly fun to jump into my automobile, abandon the solitude of Gamone and find myself (a few kilometers up the road) in the warm atmosphere of my friends' home. After expressing my muddled apologies for forgetting about their invitation, I listened to a delightful anecdote from Tineke, which I shall summarize briefly. Several years ago, I built a small website [display] for Tineke. Well, recently, a Dutch scientist and his wife discovered this website, and they immediately dropped in on Tineke at Choranche in order to acquire one of her sculptures. This proves that the website is effective from a professional viewpoint, as it were, which is reassuring. But the anecdote doesn't stop there. The scientist is a computer specialist, aficionado (like me) of Apple products, and he's also a talented photographer. What's more, he has a sense of humor, for he left a gift for me with Tineke and Serge: a copy of his latest book, entitled Windows for Beginners.

Contrary to what might be imagined, this delightful little book has nothing to do with Microsoft's operating system. It's an anthology of excellent images of real-world windows in many corners of the planet.

Recently, in this blog, I proposed a small selection of Tineke's photos concerning the demolition of the rock overhanging the road at Choranche [display]. Last night, I had an opportunity of seeing the entire set of photos, presented in an elegant large-screen montage. In the context of this presentation of massive aspects of our mineral world of the Vercors (dark humid cliffs, jagged fragments of rocks, icy slopes and frozen valleys), I was impressed, above all, by the faces of the various human actors in charge of this demolition project: the serious regard of the elected represented of the region (whose troubled expressions reflected the recent horror of finding the occupants of an automobile crushed by a huge boulder that had slid down the slopes of Choranche), and the strangely nonchalant attitudes of the young helmeted climbers, attired in colorful garments and encumbered with ropes and chains, who were often obliged to scramble over the cliff face in the light of projectors, in the middle of the freezing night, adjusting steel rods and holes for dynamite in the fragile rocks.

Tineke's photos reveal the regard of an artist. She's not only a sculptor, but a painter too. Like her, I was fascinated, a fortnight ago, by the presence of heavy frost at Choranche, enclosing every element of vegetation on the slopes and in the valley of the Bourne. Well, Tineke ventured out into the cold with her camera and produced an amazing series of images of this exceptional frost. She also produced a remarkable series on a simple but wonderful theme: brilliantly-hued roosters and hens wandering around contentedly in a local farmyard. Here at Gamone, I've often had fowls (including peacocks and ducks), and I've always considered them as immensely beautiful creatures, whose mere presence can have a strangely soothing effect upon human observers... like fish in an aquarium, which dentists used to install in their waiting rooms, in the hope of attenuating the stress of patients.

When I was about to leave for home around 1.30 this morning, I found my Citroën covered in ice. Serge suggested that I wait a minute while he prepared an antidote: a plastic watering-can full of boiling water, which removed the ice instantly. This morning, the cold has conquered my automobile once again [I don't yet have anything that might be described as a garage], and the traces of the boiling-water method have given rise to beautiful crystalline forms on the windshield and bonnet. I said to myself: If Tineke were to see my old Citroën in this striking visual state, she would surely either take a photo of it, produce a painting of the subject, or maybe even create some kind of gigantic Martian-like metal and stone structure, on our slopes of Choranche, entitled William's automobile. You never know what surprises you might get from authentic artists. Like an unexpected phone call, at the start of a wintry evening, which drags you out of your silence and solitude and into a universe of warm light, splendid colors and strange forms.

Photos of the rock by Tineke Bot

My neighbor Tineke Bot is not only a sculptor but also a talented photographer. Living just near the Choranche rock that was recently demolished, she was able to take a nice series of photos of these operations, which I've uploaded into my webspace [display].

In my article entitled Choranche rock 'n' roll [display], I described the main initial phase of this demolition. In the days following the initial explosion, the engineers realized that a sizable portion of the rock was still in place, so they decided to perform a second explosion... which is what you see in the final photo of Tineke's presentation. Her second-last photo is amusing. Shortly before the dynamite was scheduled to explode, somebody noticed that several hang-gliders were drifting in the mist, dangerously close to the site.

Choranche rock 'n' roll

My recent article entitled Rock is ready to fall [display] described the giant rock at Choranche overhanging the road from Pont-en-Royans up to Villard-de-Lans. This afternoon, lots of spectators gathered on the slopes of Châtelus to watch the successful dynamiting of this rock.

Tineke and Serge are standing alongside the painted marks delimiting the safety zone for spectators. Many of the people who turned up here, mingling with road-workers in their bright uniforms, were residents who had been evacuated by the authorities. Since it was quite cold outdoors, the mayor and councilors of Châtelus had the brilliant idea of setting up a roadside stand to serve us free drinks: cups of warm red wine flavored with cinnamon. The mounting excitement of the onlookers may have been enhanced by the wine. In any case, the atmosphere was festive. At one stage, a Belgian dentist who has recently moved into an old farmhouse in Châtelus started entertaining us with his accordion.

Meanwhile, the truck that had delivered its precious cargo of dynamite to the site started to unload big rolls of plastic.

A red mobile crane had hoisted the heavy plastic to the top of the rock, where workers were draping it over the rock, so that houses down to the left might be protected from projections due to the blast.

The first indication that the explosion had taken place was visual. The rock was encircled by brilliant red flashes. Then everything was hidden by a gigantic cloud of yellowish smoke, and an enormous dull thud resounded throughout the so-called Circus of Choranche. A minute later, when the smoke had cleared, we were amazed to see that the rock had disappeared, the road was perfectly intact, and all the vegetation on the slopes beneath the site had been cleared by the hail of rocks, forming a twenty-meter-wide path down to the edge of the Bourne.

When I succeeded in photographing the site from a closer distance, I was intrigued to discover that the interior of the rock contained the same blue limestone found below my property, commonly referred to as Gamone bluestone.

Down at the site, everything was now calm. Except for a few big fragments and a lot of rubble, most of the rock had been disintegrated and blown clean across the road, as planned, and I had the impression that not even a single tire had been touched by the blast. But the site was ghostly, as if a great crime had just been perpetrated here.

For Tineke, in a way, this was the case. As a sensitive sculptor, from the moment she bought the property thirty years ago, she had always imagined the great rock as the fist of an outstretched arm, ready to protect her from the obscure forces of the surrounding mountains. Now the authorities had come along and blown the hand off her protector. But Serge and Tineke were thrilled to discover that the engineers had carried out their task impeccably, and that the houses adjacent to the explosion had suffered no damage whatsoever.

I was amused to see that grubby leather gloves, abandoned by a worker a few days ago, were still lying on the parapet, a few meters away from the heart of the explosion. I pointed them out to Tineke, who confirmed that she too had seen them lying there yesterday. Maybe, I thought, they were magic gloves, no longer serving any useful purpose, that had dropped to the parapet from the hand of Tineke's protector.

Rock is ready to fall

We've just been informed that the dynamiting of the huge rock overhanging the road at Choranche has been pushed back 24 hours, because light rain is falling this morning, and this could interfere with the ignition of the explosives. So, the ignition is henceforth scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday, 12 December, at 13.00 hours.

The rock is located several kilometers up beyond my property, and a kilometer or so to the east of the village of Choranche. There are relatively few houses in the vicinity of the rock. The pretty beige house with pale green shutters is quite close to the rock, and could be damaged by the explosion. The property of my friends Tineke Bot, the Dutch sculptor, and her husband Serge is a hundred meters further down the road. The constructions in the foreground of the above photo are in fact located at Châtelus, and separated from the rock by the Bourne. It goes without saying that all these properties will be emptied of their occupants a few hours before the explosion.

As you can see from the above photo, the section of road directly beneath the rock is supported by a man-made stone wall, which in fact juts out into the valley, forming a hairpin bend beneath the rock. If the overhanging rock were to be dislodged in a relatively calm fashion, with a minimum charge of explosives, it would slide down vertically onto the road, and its gigantic weight would then carry the roadway and the stone wall down into the Bourne, creating a nasty mess. So, the strategy adopted by the engineers will consist of placing a huge charge of explosives behind the left-hand (Choranche) side of the rock, so that it will be blown out into the empty valley to the right, in the direction of Villard-de-Lans.

Beneath the rock, the engineers have created a huge pile of old tires, covered in gravel. Ideally, this should cushion the shock of big chunks of rock falling onto the road, and nudge them off into the valley... where hikers will be discovering, for years to come, wedged between the trees and the rocks, mysterious fragments of damaged tires. The next time the Bourne is flooded at Pont-en-Royans, residents of the cliff houses will be intrigued by the strange vision of rafts of old tires floating beneath their balconies.

Deadly collapse of rocks in Choranche

This afternoon, while installing a new lamp on the façade of my house, I heard sirens down on the road that runs alongside the Bourne. A few hours later, Natacha phoned me from Marseille saying that she had heard news on TV of an automobile crushed by rocks at Choranche, a few kilometers up beyond the village, on the road that runs along the cliffs in the direction of Rencurel.

A 47-year-old man and his 13-year-old son were killed instantly by the big rectangular block seen in the above photo, while his wife and two other children were wounded. Four years ago, a similar accident occurred at the same place, crushing two people in an automobile.

I've driven along that awesome road on countless occasions, and I always feel relieved when I get through the sections with overhanging rocks. The authorities often talk of purging and reinforcing the crumbly zones, but everybody knows that it's impossible to guarantee total security. Roads of this kind in the Vercors, often designed by the adjective "aerial", were cut into the faces of the cliffs over a century ago, which means that there has been time for dangerous fissures to grow. When I see the way in which freezing conditions can burst a copper water pipe, I'm not surprised that abrupt temperature variations (such as the onslaught of wintry conditions at Choranche over the last week) can dislodge a huge chunk of overhanging rock. Personally, ever since the first catastrophe of this kind, I've tended to avoid this risky but otherwise spectacular road. And I feel that, after this second accident, more and more travelers will prefer alternative routes. On the other hand, if you look at the situation calmly and evaluate it in terms of statistics, there are far fewer accidents on this road than down on the busy highways through the valley. But statistics don't attenuate the anguish of driving underneath those gigantic blocks of rock, which appear to be suspended precariously and capable of losing their grip on the face of the limestone cliffs and sliding down onto the road.

Camping site at Châtelus

From Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne, there's a magnificent view of the limestone cliffs above the village of Choranche.

My friends Michèle and Daniel Berger run a camping park in Châtelus named Chez la Mère Michon, located just below their house. I've just reinstalled an updated version of the simple website I built for them. Click on the above photo to access this website. You can then click on a Union Jack flag to display the English version.

Annual trim

At high school, our dear old ruffled chemistry teacher Gerald Spring liked to tell his favorite joke about a French barber. Holding up a mirror so that the client could admire his haircut, the barber asked: "Is that OK?" Client: "Make it just a little longer at the back, please."

The road up to Gamone has just received its annual trim. A farmer from a relatively distant village [Chantesse, on the Grenoble side of Vinay] has a permanent contract to carry out this work, not only at Choranche, but in several other places. It's a solid money-making affair for this fellow, and the job is easy, provided that no discarded fencing wire is hidden in the roadside weeds. At Gamone, by the time this annual event takes place, the weeds have grown so tall that they droop over the road, and driving through them is a little like moving along a jungle track. Then, in the space of a day, the road becomes as bald as Billy's head after a visit to the lady barber in St-Jean-en-Royans.

The other day I was chatting with my neighbor Dédé, and he offered to speak to a farmer friend about the idea of cutting the abundant weeds in my paddock with walnut trees. The general idea is that farmers are often prepared to do this work free provided they can keep the cut weeds, which they bundle up to make hay for their farm animals. Dédé himself has such an arrangement with the farmer in question. I started to explain to Dédé that I'm not bothered greatly by the presence of weeds around the walnut trees at this time of the year. Then Dédé used a word that has always amused me in the case of weeds. He said that the main advantage in having the weeds cut is that the paddock would look "cleaner". Over the years, I've heard Dédé using this adjective dozens of times, when talking about everything from grass on the lawn to shrubs on the hillside. I understand that long grass and weeds can appear to be "dirty", or at least unkempt, in much the same way as long straggly hair. If people in general did not have this impression, then the gardens of suburbs and villages would be peaceful havens of a weekend instead of transmitting raucous symphonies of lawnmower cacophony.

Here at Gamone, although I have no aversion to weedy paddocks, I do in fact own a particularly powerful and noisy Japanese weed-cutter, shown in this photo taken by Natacha:

If I were sufficiently motivated, I could spend days and days guiding this machine over the slopes of Gamone... but I see no point in doing so. Not surprisingly, Dédé was the first person who pointed out to me, years ago, the futility of devoting time and energy to clean up land, only to find it just as weedy as ever a year later.

All this talk about weeds and clearing up land takes me back in time to my childhood, when I saw my father constantly obsessed by the challenge of eradicating eucalyptus trees on his bush property. I don't know which of the two phenomena he hated most, trees or rabbits, which were both accused of playing a role in depriving his cherished cattle of their precious grass. In that domain, here's a photo of my mother's ancestral Braidwood region:

I was amused by the terse comments penned on the back of this photo by my cousin Peter Hakewill, the photographer: "Sheep country. Bleak. Over-cleared of trees by dumb cockies." [The word "cocky" is Aussie slang for farmer.]

Obviously, the consequences of not removing weeds and unwanted shrubs are considerably more significant when you're obliged to use your land to earn your living, instead of merely looking at it (as is the case for me). I've often thought that the hordes of suburbanites who spend their weekends mowing the lawn and tending to flower beds are in fact expressing an atavism associated with epochs when our ancestors were primeval crop-growers. Now, this thought makes me feel really bad. Why? Answering this question will provide me with yet another pretext for displaying a hazy photo of my magnificent personal mountain, the Cournouze, on the other side of the Bourne:

Up on top of that sacred mountain [well, it's sacred for me], there's a cavernous site [weird on top of a mountain] called the Pas de la Charmate, shown here:

Archaeologists tell us this site was occupied frequently during the four millennia stretching from 9,800 to 5,800 before the present era. That's a hell of a long duration: twice as long as the time since Jesus up until today. And what did my Cournouze neighbors do with themselves during that time? Well, we know they hunted mountain goats, deers and boars, which was a perfectly normal occupation. Maybe bisons and mammoths, too. Apparently, a more amazing occupation of these ancient residents of Choranche and Chatelus was ceramics. They must have had business links, too, with folk living on the French Riviera and even the distant Adriatic coast, because Cournouze digs have revealed the presence of pierced seashells from these places. It's highly likely, too, that my former Cournouze neighbors had developed the art of sowing a tiny acreage of crops to produce feed for their equally tiny herds of domesticated animals, maybe primeval cattle.

In the course of four millennia, a lot of phantoms must have taken up residence up there on top of the Cournouze, and I can imagine them looking down on Gamone [direct line of sight] and murmuring disparagingly, in ghost language: "What a bloody pity that Aussie guy isn't more enthusiastic about keeping his fucking weeds down."

Local political meeting

Before today, the first and last time I attended a political meeting in France was in 1969, when a dynamic young political figure named Michel Rocard was campaigning in the Yvelines département near Paris. This morning, at Choranche, it was a more modest affair. The Socialist member of parliament, André Vallini, was accompanied by his vice-candidate, Jean-Michel Revol, and the local councilor, Bernard Perazio (my former neighbor, whom I've known for years).

In the audience, besides a journalist-photographer from St Marcellin, the wife of the mayor of Choranche and me, there were three other people. The major theme of the discussions (introduced by the mayor's wife) was the possibility of serving bio food in the school canteen.

Vallini, a 50-year-old professional lawyer, is well-known throughout France since his much-publicized role as president of a parliamentary commission, last year, that inquired into a great miscarriage of justice known as the Outreau Affair. A group of irreproachable citizens had been wrongly accused of sexual misconduct, and condemned in an outrageous fashion by a biased, stubborn and immature judge, as a consequence of dubious evidence extorted from children. Vallini's TV appearances at the head of this commission earned him the reputation of an outstanding individual, capable of soaring above partisan politics. Indeed, if Ségolène Royal had been elected, he would have surely been named Minister of Justice. Meanwhile, a jury of 120 political journalists recently elected Vallini as the "parliamentarian of the year".

Caves of Choranche

Nothing anguishes me more than heights and holes. By heights, I mean mountain ledges and cliffs. By holes, I mean deep gorges and abysses. Well, in settling down in a place such such as Choranche, I struck a jackpot of nightmares. It’s an empire of heights and holes. That’s the main reason why people come here... either to visit the famous limestone caves (like those of Jenolan in Australia) or because they’re keen on rock-climbing or caving.

Concerning the caves of Choranche, it's hoped that these extraordinary geological phenomena will end up being placed on Unesco’s list of World Heritage sites. This would be a godsend for local tourism. Not surprisingly, however, a handful of rural families—nearly all of whom are oldtimers in the region—have expressed opposition to the Unesco project, because they have the impression that they will be subjected to constraints such as no longer being free to erect farm buildings or create tractor paths through the woods.

In the case of caves, the question of property rights and obligations is amusing. To be considered as the legal owner of a vast underground network of caves, you only have to own the property where the unique exit is located. In the case of the local caves, their unique exit is located up in the cliff face above the commune of Choranche, which is why they are referred to as the caves of Choranche. But the kilometers of subterranean passages are actually located beneath the surface of a neighboring commune, Presles. Obviously, the owners of land that lies directly above the network would be targeted by new legislation introduced in the context of the Unesco project. In other words, property-owners in Presles would bear the brunt of constraints, even though the caves are located officially in Choranche. This apparent anomaly is an ideal pretext for kindling animosity between the native families whose ancestors worked in agriculture and newcomers who are more oriented towards touristic activities.

Happily, although I’m a perfect case of a newcomer from a foreign land (where “foreign land” means any geographical region on the planet located more than fifty or so kilometers from the village of Choranche), I find it easy to avoid being dragged into these squabbles. After all, it’s a spontaneous reaction for me to steer clear of anything and everything that’s connected with heights and holes.