Before and after the storm

This afternoon, I took two photos from the same spot: my bathroom window. In both cases, my Nikon was pointed in more-or-less the same direction: out onto the valley of the Bourne and the Cournouze mountain. The first photo was taken in the middle of the afternoon, when a storm was brewing. In the space of ten minutes, the sky had suddenly turned black.

Click to enlarge

Then the rain fell. Finally, the sun reappeared, and the second photo was taken twenty minutes ago.

Meanwhile, the week-old heat wave had come to a spectacular end.

PS Both photos were obtained with the automatic settings on my Nikon D70s (that's to say, in both cases, I simply pointed and pushed the button), and the published images are totally-untouched screen dumps.

Straight lines

People who live in the vicinity of cliffs and mountains soon discover the powerful beauty of straight lines, which determine the trajectories of both light and sound. Early every morning, when I wander up the road with Fitzroy for our habitual 20-minute excursion (giving the dog an opportunity to do his poo, generally on the neighbor's territory), there's a surprising moment when Fitzroy suddenly halts, gazes down into the valley, and acts for half-a-minute as if he were expecting a motor vehicle to appear on the scene. The explanation is simple, although the abundant foliage tends to conceal the facts. Over a short section of our itinerary (no more than a few meters), a straight line connects us to the main road down alongside the Bourne. And if, by chance, a vehicle happens to be moving along the road at that moment, then we can hear the sound of it quite clearly, creating the impression that this vehicle might indeed be heading up the road towards Gamone. Funnily, Fitzroy seems to have realized by now that the ghost vehicle, whose presence he has sensed, is only an illusion, and that there's no point in lying flat alongside the road to await its arrival. But he stills gets tricked for a few seconds, whenever our arrival at that spot coincides with the passage of a vehicle down in the valley. I don't know what kinds of principles of mathematics and physics float around in Fitzroy's mind, but I feel that he has mastered the problem from a pragmatic viewpoint.

Euclid

Straight lines were invented, as it were, by Euclid, who flourished in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I, some three centuries before the start of the Christian era. In Euclidean geometry, the very first axiom postulates that a straight line can be drawn from any point to any other point. But the universe seems to have mastered the question of straight lines well before Euclid started to think about them... although we now know that a so-called straight line is a simplified version of more generalized entities called geodesics, which play a fundamental role in general relativity.

Einstein

In our villages, towns and cities, straight lines are relatively recent artificial constructions. In the beginning, most village lanes had lots of bends in them, like creeks and rivers. In Paris, the civic planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann [1809-1891] spent a colossal amount of public money in the creation of straight avenues, ostensibly so that troops would find it easier (if need be) to handle throngs of rioters. And even today, many Parisians speak of this self-proclaimed "Baron" as if he had committed an unforgivable sin in straightening and widening the thoroughfares of the city.

Haussmann

Personally, I'm horrified by the Euclidean linear layouts of cities in the New World, particularly when the streets are numbered and labeled as north, south, east or west. On the contrary, I'm always awed to discover, on late summer evenings, that the setting Sun has succeeded in finding a linear itinerary through the slopes above Pont-en-Royans enabling our faithful star to illuminate the limestone cliffs of the Cournouze, for a few fleeting minutes, with a warm reddish glow. Euclid imagined that all straight lines are basically of the same nature. As for me, I prefer those of Choranche to those, say, of Manhattan. And, if we were to think of Euclid's straight line as an abstract archaic god (why not?), we might say that its temple is Stonehenge.

Red cliffs in the winter sunset

At this time of the year, I don't usually drive across in the vicinity of Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne. But I went across there a few days ago for the combined luncheon for the senior citizens of our three neighboring villages: Châtelus, Choranche and Presles. The food (prepared by a restaurant in the nearby village of Saint-Romans) was excellent, but I was dismayed to find that conversation was ruled out through the presence of a DJ who did his best to make everybody dance and sing. On the way home, I was able to take a lovely photo of the cliffs above Choranche in the direction of Presles.

[Click to enlarge]

Bend in the river

Once upon a time, at an unknown date, a lady in a black robe and hat stepped into the River Bourne below Gamone and got her photo taken.

Here's another photo of the same spot, taken in 1926, which shows a segment of the road that leads from Pont-en-Royans (behind the photographer's back) to the village of Choranche:

In the background of the second photo, you get a glimpse of the Cournouze mountain in the upper right-hand corner. You can also see, to the left, a section of the great limestone cliffs above Choranche.

In the middle of both photos (at the level of the house of my neighbor Madeleine Repellin, behind the trees on the left), a kind of small dam—a couple of meters high—crosses the Bourne. It's an ancient structure, perpetually overflowing, that diverts water into the Rouillard mill, midway between Gamone and Pont-en-Royans.

These days, the spot where the lady in black was wetting her toes looks like this:

It's a magnificent place. And Gamone lies a few hundred meters up the slopes to the left.

Cheesy welcome to Choranche

I was stunned, a few days ago, to discover an enormous colorful billboard, promoting cheese, that had sprung up beneath my nose, a few hundred meters below my property at Gamone.

Installed within a sturdy wooden frame upon a pair of massive concrete blocks inside a former stone quarry, on the blind corner where the narrow road up to Presles leaves the main road between Pont-en-Royans and Villard-de-Lans, this cheesy billboard, which is both an eyesore and a danger, promotes a relatively recent local cheese named Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage. As far as I know, our commune of Choranche has no obvious role in the promotion of this cheese factory up on the plateau. Cheese-wise, from both a cultural and a milk-production viewpoint, Choranche has always belonged to the world-famous district of St-Marcellin, manufactured from cows' milk produced in some 300 communes of the Isère, Drôme and Savoie departments. The Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage can therefore be looked upon as a new kid on the block, which is hardly about to replace the ancient St-Marcellin product as our most celebrated cheese.

The silliest aspect of this promotional act is the fact that the billboard has been placed on the left-hand side of the road in the middle of an exceptionally dangerous corner (our local roads are obliged to follow ancient pathways whose itineraries are often neither logical nor safe by modern standards), where motorists are obliged to be on the lookout for approaching vehicles that might be drifting across the white lines. Consequently, no reasonable driver has an opportunity of admiring the billboard without risking his life and the lives of other motorists. Indeed, the billboard is only visible over a distance of a few dozen meters. If ever a driver were to devote even a second to examining the contents of the billboard while traveling along this short section of the curve, he/she would be necessarily distracted to the point of becoming a mortal danger for approaching vehicles.

I've actually brought up this road-safety question with a couple of fellow residents, who simply haven't succeeded in becoming aware of the message that the billboard is supposed to transmit. One of these individuals has been attracted primarily—and exclusively, I would say—by the vision of the enormous blocks of concrete on which the billboard has been placed.

Times are hard, economically, and anybody who dares to interfere with economic progress might be seen as a reactionary. So, I've decided to do nothing more than publish the present blog post, to express (for the record) my purely personal disapproval of this cheesy billboard.

You can lead a dog to water...

... but you can't necessarily make him dive in and swim. The presence of Emmanuelle at Gamone made it feasible to coax Fitzroy into the car and take him down to the Bourne in the village of Choranche. During the excursion, my daughter's role consisted of making sure that our dog wouldn't jump up onto me when I was at the wheel.

If Fitzroy's head appears to be a little wet, that simply means that I had cupped up water in my hands and annointed him. For the moment, in spite of French successes at the Olympic Games, Fitzroy seems to be quite uninterested in swimming. We must not forget that he's a mountain dog, born in the Alpine village of Risoul 1850, at an altitude (as its name indicates) of 1850 meters. Fitzroy is capable of scaling an almost vertical embankment in a few bounds, but he's apparently uninterested in the idea of jumping into a stream in the valley.

From my bathroom window

Often, when I look out through my bathroom window, I'm surprised to find an aircraft looking back at me.

It would be nice to know the preoccupations—the nature of the missions—of such visitors. But it would be hard to acquire such information. And hardly worthwhile. Most often, the aircraft disappear just as rapidly as they arrived on the scene.

I'm always a little worried, though, that low-flying aircraft might get tangled up in hard-to-see power cables that crisscross the Bourne valley. My late friend Adrian Lyons—a skilled pilot until he went down in England on 1 August 1999—once told me that this danger is indeed very real at Choranche.

Exceptional vision of the valley

Late this afternoon, when I caught sight of extraordinary hues in the valley, I grabbed my Nikon and took the following shot from the bathroom window:

My motivations behind this photo [click to enlarge] were actually a little more complicated, and confused. While opening the bathroom window to take a look at the dogs, I glimpsed the blurry mirror image of the Huillier houses in Châtelus, at the foot of the Cournouze. The two on the right, one superimposed on the other, gave the impression of the presence of a Byzantine chapel with a tower. I realized immediately that the extraordinary reddish light was playing tricks on me.

Light for Lotus

This evening, a simple sad candle is burning alongside my fireplace. And its pale light fills my mind with precious memories... of a dear dog.

I'm thinking of the splendid chocolate-colored Brach hound Lotus, who left us today. She was my friend, who manifested her affection whenever I visited Tineke and Serge. I shared constantly with Lotus the sweet tragedy of her existence in the midst of a paradise with all the magnificent scents of Choranche flowers and the aroma of wild Vercors beasts. Many times, Lotus would have loved to escape from her home domain in order to hunt all kinds of magic phantoms on the archaic slopes of the Bourne, where mammoths once roamed. Unfortunately, at a practical level, this was unthinkable. If Lotus had been allowed to roam around in total liberty in the Cirque de Choranche, it's almost certain that Tineke and Serge would have never seen her again, because she had the genes of a hunting hound, and there were no limits to where these genes might have led Lotus. So, a modus vivendi had to be established pragmatically. Lotus was more-or-less free to follow her nose around the splendid domain, with its countless specimens of vegetation. But, to keep her at home, limits had to be imposed gently upon Lotus, by means of walls or a light leash. The dog found this quite acceptable. She was an overjoyed inmate of Rochemuse, always resplendent, friendly and visibly happy. Lotus realized that she was in wonderful hands. Competent and loving hands. The hands of an artist, Tineke. Those of a master craftsman, Serge.

As of today, Lotus is liberated! In pursuit of the olfactive messages received by her soft sensitive snout, she can bound towards the stars...

Closed valley

I took this photo this morning:

[Click to enlarge slightly]

French air-force jet fighters often fly low over Gamone and head towards the horizon at the far end of the valley, in the direction of the Vercors plateau, the Alps and finally Italy. Such fighter pilots would do well to resist the temptation to swoop down, for fun, through those low-floating fluffy clouds at the end of the valley. This is the scene on a less cloudy day:

I guess they have gadgets enabling them to avoid crashing into concealed cliff faces.

Gamone lies within Natura 2000

This morning, I received an official letter from a fellow-citizen reminding me that my property at Gamone is located within one of the ecological zones defined in the context of a European chart, Natura 2000.

The following map indicates, in dark green, all the Natura 2000 zones (26 in all) in the Rhône-Alpes region, which includes many prestigious landscapes and extraordinary sites.

[Click to enlarge]

Our tiny local zone, in the middle of the map, has an exotic official label: Prairies of wild orchids, tufa deposits and Gorges of the Bourne. Here is the exact location of the zone that includes Gamone:

[Click to enlarge]

It's funny to learn that you're living in the middle of some kind of ecological museum. Normally, after next week's meeting in the municipal hall at Choranche, I'll know more about the down-to-earth implications of this affair. In any case, I'm such a profound admirer of my magnificent adoptive abode that I could hardly love and respect it any more than I do already. I even get around to thinking that the situation might be reversed. Maybe this wild and glorious land should have a little bit more respect for an awkward but intrepid old Antipodean such as me, living dangerously at times, who will never conquer its challenges, master its mysteries, nor fully behold its beauty.

Helicopter territory

All morning, a red and yellow helicopter has been hovering spasmodically in the vicinity of the Tina Dalle cliffs, above Choranche, which are a popular site for novice climbers.

Finally, I grabbed my camera and drove up there, to see what might be happening. Reaching Presles, I found the helicopter parked in an open field, while its uniformed occupants were seated out on the grass, engaged in serious discussions, with lots of gesticulations. They appear to be carrying out training exercises for pilots. Then they jumped in and took off towards the south, no doubt to refuel, since they reappeared in the skies of Choranche and Presles some ten minutes later.

Although the landscape was hazy, I took advantage of my excursion to take a few photos.

Seen from up there, my familiar and fabulous Cournouze [see the red-sunlit splash image at the top of this Antipodes blog] looks like a mediocre hunk of rock on top of a wooded cone.

All the topological details that are so familiar when seen my house at Gamone are reduced to tiny blobs, not easy to identify.

This sign, halfway down the slopes, designates crossroads where all the surrounding directions ("toutes aures") are visible.

On one side of this spot, the road between Choranche and Presles forms a hairpin bend.

The plateau of Presles is still far above us.

From this place, you have a splendid view of two mountains that are my close neighbors down in the valley. In the narrow gap between the Baret (left) and the Trois-Châteaux (right), just a few hundred meters away from Gamone, the Bourne flows down from Choranche to Pont-en-Royans. And the road, too, goes through that gap.

CORRECTION: The mayor of Choranche, Bernard Bourne, dropped in at Gamone yesterday afternoon to ask for my opinion concerning an ancient public pathway up on the crest above my house. He wanted to know, in particular, if I would be happy if the municipality were to privatize that old pathway (apparently this is a feasible operation), giving me half of the privatized surface above my property, and attributing the other half to my neighbor Gérard Magnat. In a forthcoming blog post, I'll explain why I prefer by far (not surprisingly) that this wonderful pathway remains part of the public heritage of Choranche.

Towards the end of my friendly discussion with Bernard, I happened to mention the noisy helicopter that had been hovering for hours, throughout the morning, around the magnificent Tina Dalle site. In his capacity as mayor, Bernard was able to tell me exactly what it was all about. The evening before yesterday, residents of that cliff-side zone of Presles had noticed an apparently-abandoned vehicle, and informed the gendarmes, who promptly called in the red-and-yellow mountain-security helicopter. They discovered the body of a 56-year-old guy at the bottom of the cliffs, on the territory of Choranche (vertical cliffs often serve as municipal boundaries), and the gendarmes soon concluded that they were faced with a suicide case. [Weirdly, this happened at almost the same time that other gendarmes and another helicopter crew were discovering the remains of a murdered 17-year-old jogger in the Ardèche town of Tournon, opposite the famous vineyards of Tain-l'Hermitage, less than an hour's drive from here.] Yesterday, above the vertiginous Tina Dalle boundary between Presles and Choranche, the helicopter was no doubt searching for evidential items that might have been discarded by the fellow or torn from his clothes during his rocky descent to death.

Rose that glows gold

I've owned a Blue Ray machine for almost a year, but I hadn't got around to turning it on, in spite of the ten or so DVDs I'd purchased during my visits to the Fnac store in Valence. I'm rarely in a receptive mood for sitting down and watching video stuff. But this was a special evening, in that I'd invited along my marvelous Choranche friends Tineke Bot and her husband Serge Bellier for a dinner of spare ribs (soy sauce and red beans) followed by a screening of Avatar. Normally, I don't cut the flowers in my rose garden, but this was a special event, so I sacrificed a magnificent Gold Glow specimen.

[Click to enlarge]

The following morning, I was overjoyed to receive a phone call from François Skyvington informing me that he has received promises of a wonderful TV career in prime time on a national channel. Details will emerge, as usual, at the desired rhythm of my son.

It was also a fine day to say that "enough's enough" to certain would-be international Internet friends whose pretentious dullness was starting to bore me. They may not have understood what I was trying to say (they certainly don't), but I feel liberated.

Wintry view from behind the house

Normally, I wouldn't think of strolling up behind the house and taking a photo in the direction of the cliffs of Presles. If I did so this afternoon, it was because I happened to be up there taking photos of my donkeys, and I was intrigued by the thick layer of snow remaining on my roof (which proves that my thermal insulation is sound) combined with the relative absence of snow on the slopes beyond Gamone Creek, and the patches of blue sky smiling out from behind the clouds above the plateau of the Coulmes (alongside Presles).

This photo is interesting in that it demonstrates how, in a mountainous region, a field of vision can change abruptly from one spot to another. In the case of this scene, somebody down in front of my house, just a few meters away from where I was standing to take this photo, would fail to see that giant cliff up in the top left-hand corner.

Unexpected cultural links

I've mentioned already—in my articles entitled History of wine at Choranche [display] and Wine of a kind [display]—my interest in the almost-forgotten history of the vineyards of Choranche. My article on this subject (in French) is due to appear in the forthcoming issue of a Vercors historical journal. This activity as a local historian has led to my being invited, this afternoon, to the annual get-together of the Vercors cultural-heritage authorities. The assembly took place in the ancient convent of the Carmelite monks at Beauvoir-en-Royans, inside the domain of Humbert II [1312-1355], the last prince of the Dauphiné.

The proceedings started with a brilliant 20-minute exposé of the history of the Carmelites by my friend Michel Wullschleger, who's a professor of history and geography at the university of Lyon. Once we were all reminded of the historical background of the splendid building in which we were seated, it was time to tackle the true subject of the day: namely, the genesis and spirit of an entity such as the PNRV [Parc naturel et régional du Vercors: Vercors regional nature park], which is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I heard that the guest speaker—a young academic from the university of Saint-Etienne—was going to explain to us how the origins of the concept of our celebrated regional park were profoundly geared to the ideas of Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862]. For me, retrospectively, it's natural that my adolescent fascination for the magnificent story of Thoreau's Walden Pond—which I used to read, fascinated, in Sydney's Mitchell Library, when I would have been better off brushing up on my mathematics—should have led me to my present solitary existence in the mountainous wilderness of the Vercors.

I was elated that a bright young French historian might give a lecture on such links. He explained that, in former British conquests and colonies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc), the creation of nature parks usually meant that remnants of indigenous populations were chased away (like Red Indians), so that they wouldn't interfere with environmental issues and tourists (not necessarily in that order of priorities). When I dared suggest that maybe we Australians had created nature parks in which the Aborigines were welcome (to say the least), I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the French speaker mastered all the fine details of the Down Under dossier. He thanked me kindly for bringing up this interesting and pertinent question (about which he knew a lot, following research visits to Australia), then he summarized the Australian Aborigine affair in a brilliant five-minute résumé (typical of French-educated intellectuals, who've been taught to aim at essentials)… and we became instant soul friends. I wondered, for a moment, whether a young Australian academic might be able to summarize in the same style, say, the complex relationship between the French Republic and Corsican autonomists. Meanwhile, I must admit that my neighbors Tineke Bot and Serge Bellier are vastly more "Walden Pond" than me, for the simple reason that they've actually installed several artificial ponds (now vibrant with life, including frogs) on their splendid property, Rochemuse.

Towards the end of the afternoon assembly in the ancient convent, speakers turned to contemporary creative writing about the Vercors. This talk was so stupidly superficial, absurdly urban and artistically empty (from a literary viewpoint) that I got up and left. I had to return to my Vercors wilderness to feed Sophia and Fitzroy.

AFTERTHOUGHTS: Frankly, I'm not at all sure that Thoreau had anything whatsoever to do with the inspiration of nature parks in France. I hardly need to say that, when talking about a return to Nature and such matters, we cannot forget an all-important Geneva-born philosopher named Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-1778].

Autumn dawn

A quarter of an hour ago, viewed from my bathroom window, the Cournouze looked this:

Within five minutes, the cloud layer was starting to reflect the pale light of the rising sun upon the trees on the slopes of the valley of the Bourne.

Five minutes later, the Technicolor show was over. One has to act rapidly to obtain images such as these. Often I say to myself that my Antipodes blog has started to instill in me something akin to the reflexes (but not, alas, the skills) of a photographer.

Pastel valley

This morning, the valley of the Bourne was shrouded in floating mists, while the sunny sky was pale blue and studded with cumulus clouds.

On autumn mornings like this, my son and I used to have mock-serious conversations in which we would reminisce about the precise exotic regions of faraway China that were most evoked by the misty mountains of Choranche and Châtelus.

I would air my erudition: "Choranche has always reminded me of the upper regions of Fu-Ching, in the vicinity of the great Wong."

François would beg to disagree: "No, not at all; your judgment and visual memories are flawed. The Bourne provides us with exactly the same kind of splendid vision that I recall during my extensive journeys through the Min-Yang, on horseback, in early October."

At other times, I would show the above photo to friends and ask them what they thought of this image of the Bourne in the vicinity of Gamone. Let me cease my trivial joking. It's an old photo of the Clarence River at Jackadgery, not far from where I grew up in Australia.

Poetry of Pont-en-Royans

Today, for illiterate 21st-century youth, the very idea of poetry has a dinosaur flavor. What the fuck is that, man? And yet, that's not quite the case. In fact, it's not at all true to suggest that the modern world is losing its archaic poetry. On the contrary, poetry is emerging constantly in new forms, called rap, slam, etc.

From my privileged observation post alongside Pont-en-Royans and the Bourne, old-fashioned 19th-century poetry still moves me immensely. Click on the following image to obtain a readable display:

Meanwhile, our Bourne flows majestically:

Here's my interpretation of what the anonymous poet of 1871 was saying… which was surely both profound and beautiful:

In the abyss
Wild Bourne, turning
Flowing, rolling
With terrifying screams

Fantastic stream
Diabolical noise
In the night, it pursues us
Complaint of a curse

Like an emerald
Your sordid green flow
Affects me: vision of the
Fearful eye of a hawk

The immense rock
Is there to defend you
Your river bed warns me:
"God Almighty, man is small."

Then, on a crest
Above the emptiness
Human traces, fortified ruins
Six centuries old

That stuff transmits
Thoughts that make me
Shiver with fear, my heart
Feels an approaching calamity

With or without translation, those are great thoughts and words, which speak directly to my heart, or whatever it is that records marvelous moments and visions.

History of wine at Choranche

When I arrived in Choranche and settled down at Gamone, many of the local folk were surprised to find an Australian in their midst. They seemed to imagine that, not so long ago, I had surely been sunbaking on a beach in the tropics, with kangaroos hopping up to me from time to time, and the lilt of didgeridoos in the background, and then I suddenly cried out: "Jeez, I just gotta get to Choranche, as soon as possible!" So, I jumped aboard a jet, and there I was. Naturally, the local folk were curious to know what exactly had motivated that sudden decision. I suppose they saw it as some kind of revelation, like Archimedes yelling out Eureka in his bathtub, or Newton inventing the laws of gravity after getting hit on the head by an apple. The locals wanted me to describe my bathtub, my apple tree. They were a bit disappointed when I explained that I'd been working in computers for most of my life, and that it was normal to accept an interesting job in a celebrated high-tech city such as Grenoble. Soon after that, the company that had hired me changed its marketing strategy, and they no longer needed a senior technical writer. But I decided to stay on here, because I had grown fond of the wilderness. Then it was time for me to retire…

Meanwhile, I've acquired a certain reputation here in an unexpected domain. It's a domain in which I was utterly ignorant when I left Paris. In fact, I still wonder whether I really have any genuine credentials in this field, because it's not exactly my cup of tea. You see, I've acquired a reputation here as a specialist in the history of the ancient monastic vineyards of Choranche.

Retrospectively, I can see how this has happened, as the outcome of a well-defined series of small events. Often, they were chance events. When I bought the property at Gamone, for example, I had no idea that it had once been a vineyard. I only started to realize this when I found that the vaulted stone cellar was full of the debris of rotted wine vats and casks.

At the same time, I was intrigued by an intriguing juxtaposition of names that can be observed both in a map and in the local road signs. The neighborhood below Gamone is known as Choranche-les-Bains, where the term "bains" (baths) indicates that this place used to be a spa.

But, if you turn around at that spot, there's another sign, suggesting that this tiny neighborhood has a second name.

The Chartreux were members of an ancient monastic order inspired by the life of the medieval hermit Bruno [1030-1101], who has become one of my legendary heroes. [See my humble website concerning this personage.] These monks journeyed regularly to Choranche from their ancient monastery of Val Sainte-Marie at Bouvante, located 15 kilometers to the south of Choranche.

Soon after my arrival, local people informed me that this neighborhood of Choranche-les-Bains (midway between Gamone and the village of Choranche) had been transformed into a fashionable spa just about a century ago, when the health properties of the local mineral springs were advertised. Here's an old postcard of the main spa building:

Opposite the spa, a fine hotel, the Continental, was erected to provide accommodation and meals to the throngs of visitors who came here to relax in the cirque de Choranche (cirque, meaning circus: a geological term designating a bowl-shaped landscape surrounded by cliffs).

The popularity of Choranche-les-Bains ended just before World War II, but the spa building remains, today, in a perfect state, and is used as a holiday place for children.

The hotel building, too, is still there, but in a rather sad state.

The other day, I happened to be chatting about that epoch with my neighbor Georges Belle, shown here with Madeleine Repellin at our recent annual dinner for senior citizens of Choranche:

Georges recalls that, as a child, he used to see crowds of tourists getting out of buses to have lunch at the Continental in Choranche-les-Bains, which was a most fashionable watering-hole (as we might say today), in spite of the fact that there was no entertainment for visitors, not even a gambling casino. Today, Georges resides in the house that was built by the monks after their purchase of this domain back in 1543. (I've found the actual notarial record of this purchase in the archives at Valence.)

And what were the links between the popular spa of Choranche-les-Bains and the Chartreux monks, to the point that today's signposts carry the two names for this single neighborhood? It has been suggested that Chartreux monks at Choranche might have been interested in these mineral waters. Why not? After all, the Carthusians (as they are called) have been associated over the years—rightly or wrongly—with all kinds of scientific and technological endeavors, from metallurgy to pharmacology. So, why shouldn't they have moved into the neighborhood of Choranche-les-Bains, at an unspecified date in the ancient past, to investigate the interest of running a "spiritual spa", based upon monastic solitude? Nice idea… particularly the spiritual angle. But this explanation of the presence of the monks is false.

Let's get back to the red stuff, wine, upon which much of southern France has been turning for ages, with or without the crazy notion that this excellent beverage might be associated with the blood of an ancient and obscure miracle-man, in faraway Palestine, named Jesus of Nazareth. I soon found out that wine, not mineral springs, was the real reason why various monks had moved into the commune of Choranche, as long ago as the Middle Ages. Today, people still evoke the existence of a Mediterranean microclimate at Choranche, because the commune is surrounded by cliffs, which capture the warmth of the sun and act like a giant energy accumulator.

At that stage, I started to explore the in-depth history of wine-making at Choranche, using many kinds of resources, often of an unexpected nature. For example, a neighbor showed me this ancient oaken vat which she had found in a cellar alongside her house.

Above all, I learned that an old man named Gustave Rey [1910-2001] was actually born in my house at Gamone. I invited him along here, and we had a lengthy conversation (during which I took notes) about olden days at Choranche. Later, when I organized all this precious information, I had before me the fascinating history of the cunning ways in which the local folk had reacted to the calamity of the phylloxera invasion (a plant louse imported inadvertently from the USA), which destroyed the totality of French vineyards during the second half of the 19th century, reducing countless winegrowers to poverty.

I've evoked this subject in my blog because I've just completed an article on the history of the Choranche vineyards [in French, downloadable here] at the request of Les Cahiers du Peuil: a reputed historical journal published by the communes up on the Vercors.