Day Seventeen: Historical Events
Add "St. Ybars" to the Ariegean silly name roster.
Well, let today be marked down in history for two events -- Mademoiselle's Ascent of Montsegur and Mademoiselle's Discovery of "Chevretine" Goat Cheese Snackables. (You may choose for yourself which is of greater significance.)
Late yesterday afternoon, three women and their five or six hundred children checked in for the night -- all right, it was only five or six children, but they each made enough noise for a hundredfold. So I got an early start when they all rose like larks and began stampeding like buffaloes. I took a walk around the village as a warm-up and made the unexpected acquaintance of a mare -- I was creeping up on an interesting old building to see if it was inhabited or not, when a glossy brown head suddenly emerged to inquire about her breakfast. She was very gracious in allowing me to pat her warm neck, even if I didn't have any food on me.
So I drove up to the foot of the pog (that's Occitan for "huge flippin' monster rock thing") and girded my loins for the ascent. It couldn't have been better weather -- clear as a bell, not too hot but not cold and windy either. It was good to get an early start, for the ground was still muddy from yesterday's rain and was bound to get more slippery the more folks walked on it. Before long, my car was Mattel-sized with the Playskool cows a hundred miles below.
The view from the summit in every direction is as striking as can be -- then the tiny cramped keep with its tumbling walls and black currant vines crawling in the windows where the doomed perfecti sat cheek by jowl in the snow and mud preparing for a terrible death in the burning field. The rocks outside the keep are awash with little lizards -- it is a great accomplishment to sit quietly enough on a rock that they will venture out to share it with you.
It was pretty easy to descend -- though I didn't want to get cocky and turn an ankle. I wonder how many people die or are badly injured on Montsegur every year? I mean, people were bringing babies and dogs and grandmas and things, on a hike that doesn't require you be an asthmatic to be intimidated by.
I came back to the hotel around noon -- Madame had an appointment, but gave me my own key to the front door, which made me feel like an old habitué. I took a bath and wrote some boastful postcards. Then I headed down to Lavenlat for gas and stamps and cash and that holiest of Holy Grails -- a Boisson Frais ("cold drink").
It was in pursuit of the latter that I made the acquaintance of Chevretines. And my life will never be the same again. Snack-size goat cheese may not be everyone's definition of civilization, but it certainly is mine. You place a Chevretine between two Shuttles craquelins d'or, apply enough pressure to smush the Chevretine without breaking the crackers, and eat them until goat cheese starts oozing out of your ears. A recipe of Paradise