Plug taken out of river

Julie, a kinesiologist at the place in Chatte that I've been attending twice a week for the last two months, happens to be a former junior world champion in rowing, a member of the Romans club on the banks of the Isère. This morning, I asked her: "Have you seen what they've done with your river?"

Yes, she had. A week ago, the electricity authorities manipulated their dams in such a way that the only water flowing into the Isère at the level of the village of St-Nazaire came from the Bourne: the noble little stream that flows through Choranche and Pont-en-Royans. The Bourne is largely a mountain torrent, since its volume depends constantly on what's happening, in the way of rain or snow, up on the Vercors plateau.

At the place in St-Nazaire shown in this photo, there's normally a beautiful lake formed by the confluence of the Bourne and the Isère. Visitors are always stunned by the beauty of the red rocks at the tip of the peninsula, reflected in the green waters. Once upon a time, there was a fluvial port here named Rochebrune [meaning "brown rocks"]. The Chartreux monks used flat boats to bring down iron ore from distant Allevard. From St-Nazaire, these raw materials were transported by donkeys up to furnaces at Bouvantes, operated by the same monks who used to make wine at Gamone.

Julie's rowing boats are not the only grounded vessels. Against the backdrop of the aqueduct at St-Nazaire, the Royans river-boat for tourists looks like a stranded whale. Happily, this weird situation will not last for long: just the time it takes for dam workers to remove logs that have floated into their electricity installations.

For whom are roads built?

For drivers, primarily, of course. But country roads in France are used too by tons of cyclists, both with and without motors. I've even found myself waiting to overtake cross-country skiers who train on roller skates during the summer months. But the basic breakdown is between people who use the roads to earn their living, and others who are driving along it for purely personal reasons, maybe to go on a shopping excursion, or maybe for pure fun, as tourists.

In my article of 3 November 2007 entitled Deadly collapse of rocks in Choranche [display], I described a freak accident on the mountain road through Choranche in which a huge rock rolled down from the top of the slopes and fell onto an automobile, killing a father and his son.

Everybody knows that the spectacular limestone valley of the Bourne, from the ski resort of Villard-de-Lans down to Pont-en-Royans, is fragile and therefore treacherous, and it is quite possible that more rocks will fall down onto vehicles using the road. The authorities are aware that, if they invite tourists to use such a road, known to be risky, they could be held responsible for future accidents. So, there has been talk about condemning this road, even though this would be a great pity from a touristic viewpoint.

Fortunately (one might say), this treacherous road is also used by many working people, in diverse fields: truck-drivers, local farmers, tradesmen, etc. They're aware of the constant dangers when driving along this road, but they're prepared to accept this risk. If they weren't, they would no longer be able to earn their living. For these professional users, it's entirely out of the question that the road might be closed permanently.

So,we're in a weird situation. It's almost as if the authorities are saying to people: Don't use this road unless you're really obliged to, for professional reasons. It's dangerous. So, don't say we didn't warn you. In fact, the authorities can't really express themselves explicily in this kind of language. So, they simply hope that the message will get spread around by word of mouth, and that people will react accordingly.

Suburban warehouse

In the suburban context of the small nearby city of Romans, what could be more ordinary than this tidy closed warehouse, painted in black? Maybe it's a shoe factory, representing the ancient fame of Romans. Does it house the production of some other kind of manufacturer? Is it simply the hangar of an industrial enterprise?

In fact, it's the headquarters of a French magician, Dani Lary, made famous through his appearances in the Saturday-evening TV shows of Patrick Sébastien.

[Click the image to visit the excellent website of Dani Lary.]

Scars and sundials

My ex-wife, Christine Mafart, invented a delightful metaphor for the numerous irregularities in the façade of my house at Gamone. She referred to them as scars: traces of wounds, now healed by time, inflicted upon the façade of this old house that was erected back in the days of a certain Corsican soldier named Napoléon Bonaparte [1769-1821]. It's easy to understand why there were wounds and scars. When the Chartreux monks were chased away from Bouvante and Choranche, in the wake of the French Revolution, a local farmer would have purchased this property and set about transforming the ancient wine-making premises of the monks into a place where he could reside with his family and earn his living. To build a house, this fellow probably called upon his vigorous offspring to collect boulders on the slopes of Choranche, and bring them back to Gamone on the backs of donkeys or in bullock-drawn carts. If finely-cut stones could be found in the ruins of local ecclesiastic and noble structures, then so much the better. That's why my house has various splendid stone elements tucked away in the mass of hillside boulders.

If an oak beam crumbled and stones fell to the ground, the owner would do his best to patch up the disaster, using whatever materials happened to be on hand. For a few decades, carrying on the wine-making activities invented by the monks, the families at Gamone would have lived in a relatively prosperous style. But, after the abrupt and terrible devastation of France's vineyards by the phylloxera pest in the late 1800s, the folk at Gamone were no doubt reduced to survival level, because the sloping rocky land at Choranche does not lend itself to ordinary agriculture. Maybe they tried to survive by rearing goats, for meat or cheese. That hypothesis applies to the period between the phylloxera catastrophe and the agricultural activities of Hippolyte Gerin. At a certain moment in time, walnuts appeared on the scene. Needless to say, it's frustrating for me to know so little about how these people lived and worked at Gamone.

In unknown circumstances and at an unknown date, a great hole appeared in the façade of my house at Gamone, just above the steel girder seen in the old photos attached to my article entitled Gamone enhancements [display]. The owner didn't scratch his head, nor did he seek an aesthetic solution. He simply filled up the hole in the façade with vulgar red bricks. And this became the most ugly scar on the ancient façade of Gamone.

Today, thanks to the excellent restoration work of Eric Tanchon [click here to see the home page of the future website I intend to build for Eric], the huge hole above the lefthand steel girder in the façade of Gamone has been rendered smooth and relatively unnoticeable. In fact, it's a big blank rectangle on the façade, and I immediately wondered if I might not be able to occupy it, say, by a sundial. Why not?

Sundials are a local tradition. In the neighboring village of Rencurel, an ancient house boasts two sundials, separated by the colorful image of a soldier.

The principal reddish sundial, for afternoon viewing, is located on a southern wall, whereas an early-morning yellowish sundial and the brightly-colored Epinal-type soldier are found on an eastern façade of this ancient house.

In the neighboring village of St-André, I came upon lovely modern sundials, created from ancient models, executed under the guidance of my aging friend Bernard Peignet, proprietor of the castle.

On the façade of the village church, a simple sundial accompanies a big clock, so there should be no excuse for arriving late at Sunday morning mass.

Having appreciated these splendid specimens of sundials, I was impatient to know whether the flat space above the openings into my living room might be able to house, one day, such an object. Alas, I had forgotten just one essential data item. Most sundials in France are attached to southern walls. It's feasible to put a sundial on an eastern wall [see the above case of a lopsided sundial at Rencurel], but it's not an ideal solution. My empty space at Gamone is on a façade oriented toward the east, which only receives sunshine in the early hours of the morning. Putting a sundial on this wall would be akin to erecting a windmill in a deep valley where the wind rarely blows. It would be like a grandfather clock with a weak spring.

New idea. I would like to fill in the empty space on the eastern façade of Gamone with an Epinal image on the theme of an Antipodean upside-down world. Something like this:

I must talk about this idea with my Dutch friend and neighbor Tineka Bot.

Digging up the past at Gamone

Walking around my house at the present moment, you might imagine that the place has endured an attack by moles during the night. There are tiny mounds of freshly-upturned earth everywhere. No, it wasn't moles, but rather a friend of my neighbor Bob: a bright young guy from a nearby village whose hobby consists of using a metal detector to find ancient objects.

After the usual assortment of old-time toothpaste tubes and caps of oil cans, he soon found a fragment of an ancient pure silver spoon. Then he made an interesting discovery at the northern edge of my house, about six inches underground: a coin from the Ancien Régime, when France still had kings. It's a copper coin, 28 millimeters in diameter, called a sou, produced in France throughout the 15-year period from 1777 up until 1791, during the reign of Louis XVI, who was guillotined on 21 January 1793 on the vast square in Paris that is known today as the Place de la Concorde. Having remained in the earth for over two centuries, the Gamone sou is not in a pretty state, but its features can still be detected fairly easily. Here's the heads side:

Starting to the lower left of the monarch's neck, the Latin legend reads LUDOV XVI D GRATIA [Louis XVI by the grace of God]. The king's long hair is tied in a bow at the back of his neck. Notice in particular the curve of his large nose. The ten-year-old elder son of the executed king and his wife Marie-Antoinette, sometimes referred to as Louis XVII, was alleged to have died in prison in 1795. For decades, however, many people believed that he had been stealthily abducted from the tower of the Temple in Paris, and that he continued to live in clandestinity, awaiting a chance to regain the French throne. In this spirit, during a period of several decades, at least two hundred large-nosed Frenchmen have claimed to be this mythical survivor.

Here's the tails side, which is barely decipherable:

You can make out the vague traces of a shield with three fleur-de-lis symbols, surmounted by a crown. Here, for comparison, are images [found on the Internet] of a sou in a perfect state:

On the second side of the coin, the Latin legend reads FRANCIAE ET NAVARRAE REX, meaning "King of France and Navarre".

In the context of my research and reflections concerning the history of Gamone, what does it mean to have found this coin here? Well, it merely confirms what I've always believed, namely that the original owners [Chartreux monks] disappeared from the Royans shortly after the French Revolution, and that their properties were immediately purchased by local people. The main Carthusian monastery at Bouvante, called Val Sainte-Marie, was sold on 31 March 1791. I would imagine that the Gamone sou belonged, not to a monk, but to a local farmer who purchased the Choranche vineyards. In view of the spot where this coin was found this morning [just in front of the northern door into the house, rather than in the vicinity of the vaulted tufa cellar where the monks made wine], I would guess that the fellow who lost it was probably constructing, shortly after 1791, the simple stone dwelling in which I now live.

Village festival

A month ago, I wrote a post about the pagan Plowmen's Festival in the nearby village of St-Jean-en-Royans. [Click here to see this post.] Last weekend, in the neighboring village of St-Laurent-en-Royans, there was a similar annual event known as the Reinage. Few French people understand this curious term. It sounds like the French word reine, which means "queen". So, people imagine that the word reinage simply designates a village festival during which a queen is elected... much like the annual Jacaranda Queen in my native Grafton. This is almost true, but not quite. In fact, the origin of reinage is the Latin term regalis (royal). It's not a purely feminine affair. In pagan times, both a "king" and a "queen", surrounded by "acolytes", were elevated to a brief state of glory in the village. It's not very clear why these fleeting honors were bestowed upon certain adolescents in the community, but it probably had something to do with the celebrated concepts of youth, fertility and (to call a spade a spade) sex, if not debauchery.

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the Roman Church got around to edulcorating such pagan rites, the reinage concept was dealt with in a typically efficient religious style. The youthful "king", "queen" and their "court" were named either through merit, or because their parents had paid the Church for this privilege, much like present-day members of the aristocracy financing the coming-out of their daughters at balls for débutantes. Then these charming adolescents were expected to parade around the village collecting money, in the style of today's kids who participate in fund-raising days for charities. Normally, it was planned that this money should find its way up into the coffers of the Church, where it would be used for all kinds of noble purposes. But that's where things often got screwed up. The randy kids, with their hot grubby hands full of filthy lucre, would often redirect a tiny portion of their wealth to the purchase of liquor, just to cool off and sooth themselves after all their regal collecting efforts. And it could happen that things would get out of hand, and the reinage could be transformed into its archaic debauchery.

Be that as it may, at St-Laurent-en-Royans last Sunday, everything was sedate and ecclesiastically correct. The above float was manned by inmates from a local mental asylum. Initially, I thought that the two personages were Caesar and Cleopatra, but I wouldn't swear to that. It's a fact that the gentleman in the male role would often rise from his throne, while I was trying to photograph him, and hurl out "Ave Caesar!" As for his female companion, she was simply thrilled to realize that an unknown guy with a Nikon was intent upon photographing her. Incidentally, my former neighbor Bob, who works in this institution, was dressed for the Reinage parade as a Roman centurion. This was fine, since Bob, in real life, is a massive former rugby champion.

My daughter (who knows much more about France than I do, primarily because she's French) informed me that, nowadays, French youth don't actually give a screw about the cultural references I've brought into the present article (pagan rituals, Christianization, etc). Manya says they were brought up on three cultural pillars, which happen to be comic-strip characters: Astérix and Obélix, Lucky Luke and Tintin. Really, somebody should make me a king or a crazy emperor for a weekend, so that I can catch up on culture...

Annual Plowmen's Festival

In our Royans region, the major event marking the start of spring is the Plowmen's Festival in the nearby village of St-Jean-en-Royans. It's a purely pagan festival, in the original sense of the Latin words pagus, meaning "a country district", and paganus, "a villager". This annual event takes place inevitably close to the date of the great Judeo-Christian spring festival of Easter. Although the Vercors has always been a highly religious region—which once included three great 12th-century monasteries, one Cistercian (Léoncel) and the others Carthusian (Ecouges and Bouvante)—there is little doubt that the pagan Plowmen's Festival is more joyous in a popular sense than the celebration of Easter at St-Jean-Royans. The parade of floats, drawn by tractors, has always been an unsophisticated rather kitsch event, appealing above all to children. [Warning: The rest of this lengthy post is likely to be extremely boring for readers who might have ceased to look upon our marvelous world through the innocent eyes of wonderstruck children.]

While waiting for the parade to start, the Three Little Pigs are safe inside their house of wood, whereas the Wicked Wolf, standing in front of the door, looks bored. In the final rush to finish the float, somebody made a spelling mistake in the panel attached to the nose of the tractor, and had to insert a last-minute letter "C":

Little Red Riding Hood, holding her basket of provisions, is chatting calmly to another Wicked Wolf, while her rural grandparents are seated patiently on the float:

I forget what happened exactly (my fairy-tale culture is worn at the seams), but apparently Pinocchio got involved with some kind of a blue-gray aquatic creature:

Aladdin found a Magic Lamp, and that pale blue phantom-like thing emerging from the lamp is a so-called Genie:

With the village church in the background, the float presenting the complex drama of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is being dragged by an ancient dwarf-driven tractor that is an authentic museum exhibit, which causes genuine tractor-lovers (so I've been told) to stand still, open-mouthed, in admiration and awe:

If I understand correctly, this is the Handsome Prince on Horseback who kissed Snow White, lying in her glass coffin, and brought her back into our everyday world:

We have here a side-view of the resurrected Snow White, apparently seated on the rump of her Prince's steed:

To be perfectly truthful, I didn't succeed in identifying the two females seen here, seated below a shop sign marked séduction coiffure (hairstyle seduction), but I suspect that one is an Ugly Queen and the other, maybe, a Wicked Witch of one kind or another. I don't know who did the role-casting for the Plowmen's Festival.

No fairytale-oriented Plowmen's Festival would be complete without Alice in Wonderland. There's a delightful rural Royans touch here. The magic potion labeled Buvez-moi (Drink me) is contained in an old-fashioned milk can.

When they're not wearing fancy dress and crawling in their tractors through the main street of the festive village, some of the young drivers are no doubt authentic plowmen, equipped with state-of-the-art agricultural equipment of the kind seen here:

Finally, the parade closed with the maidens of St-Jean-en-Royans dancing on the macadam:

The only problem as far as the Plowmen's Festival is concerned is the weather. The first days of spring might be ideal for plowing the fields, but it's still a little too chilly for enthusiastic dancing in the street. This morning, as often happens at St-Jean-en-Royans, the fairy-tale princes, princesses, assorted elves, goblins and wicked wolves had to dash for cover when sleet started to fall upon the floats. Here in the Royans, the most extraordinary fairy tale of all would be a sunny Sunday for the Plowmen's Festival.