Day Thirty-Two: The Boar's Head, Carol
May already! The days of sabbatical are slipping through my fingers like water. I am the embodiment of ambivalence -- I do so want to see familiar faces and speak my own language and sleep in my own bed, but I am having such a glorious time in this inconceivably beautiful landscape, drinking in fresh air and sunlight and leisure through every pore.
Today's report -- or at least this portion of it -- comes from a bench in a dell in the public garden at Salies-des-Bearn. The once gaudy red-and-white confectionery of the thermal baths rises to the right of me. Yes, another spa town -- I can't quite explain how I keep landing in 'em, except that you can't swing a cat in the Pyrenees without dampening its fur in the spray of a thermal spring. Salies-des-Bearn is actually as charming as can be, and neat as a new pin on this jour du fete, with that on-its-best-behavior, all-buttons-fastened look that spa towns tend to mantle themselves in (to compensate for strangers getting naked in hot, smelly water behind closed doors, I suppose).
At breakfast, Madame and I passed a few words about how I was liking the neighborhood (enthusiasm is easy in any language), and sights seen and to be seen.... Madame highly recommended Navarrenx, a fortified cite that I'd gone past once or twice, so that was my first stop today. The ramparts look medieval but are mid-sixteenth century, so one could count my scramblings hither and thither as research. Like Orthez, it was another city of weensy narrow streets and old buildings that made it very easy to imagine the urban portions of Magda's life. The upper ramparts give a stunning view of the Oloron and its attendant trees (as long as you ignore the apprentice canoers trying their oars along the far shore. They who are about to kayak salute you).
Upon reaching Salies-des-B., I walked leisurely up from the lower parking lot -- bought tartelettes aux citron from a very fine boulangereuse, who tied them up in a cunning paper pyramid that will break my heart to destroy. Bought some postcards (including one with the recipe for gateau Basque, which has seized both imagination and palate) and some miniature bottles of Izarra, the strange green Basque liqueur. Madame very droll when I decline to have them gift-wrapped -- "Ah, c'est pour vous!" -- I hastily repudiate the imputation that I am a dangerous dipsomaniac by explaining that they have to travel to America, and all is peaceful good humor.
(Later) The last stop in Salies-des-Bearn, before heading off to Sauveterre-de-Bearn, was the Fontaine du Sanglier, a charming bit of Gascon whimsy wherein a bronze boar's head spouts salty water. The story is that the source of the thermal springs was discovered by two hunters chasing a wild boar -- its death throes churned up the source. Well, you know if there's a pig-head fountain anywhere near, I want to be in on it.... So I went around and around and around and AROUND... before discovering that the Fontaine was discreetly stationed no more than five feet to the right of my car.
Well, once again reality did better than my febrile imagination. The boar's mouth does not actually gush. Viscous liquid drips out at about the rate of drool, which has a great deal more verity than a salty arc of water. Hats off to the city council for their pureminded devotion to realism in public monuments.
Sauveterre-de-Bearn is not very far from Salies, but I took a short detour down an unnumbered skinny road toward Anthos, one of the Three Musketeer's hometowns. Unimaginably pretty country -- maybe twelve people call Anthos home today. Very easy to imagine the love you'd have for such lovely country and how you'd yearn for adventure in the great wide world outside of it. (Was "Hotel California" the right song to be listening to, though? When I am dead and opened, you shall find "Juxtaposition" graven 'pon my heart...)
Sauveterre is the cunningest, most ravishing little town it has been my pleasure to encounter here. And I use "cunning" in its most literal sense -- you can go around and around and around and AROUND without catching more than a glimpse of its delights. It's only when you park your car and begin to walk that you discover what incomparable beauties it is hiding.
So you park, and crunch across one of those glaring white courtyards that a grim municipality feels will elevate the tone of the place, towards what looks like ramparts, cool trees and most importantly, a map of the burg. When you've thoroughly confused yourself with the map, you walk further out towards the ramparts, swivel your head to the right -- and fall against the balustrades gurgling and choking, since your heart has just stopped.
At a bend in the Oloron, where the river rolls like fine grain Chinese green silk, there is an island full of swaying trees. On your side, there are the mellow old stubs of battlements that provide the perfect foothold for lush feral grasses and wildflowers stretching down a steep slope to the river. Swallows flit in and out of the windows of a ruined tower. And to complete the picture, the graceful, dignified arch of half a medieval bridge, Le Pont de la Legende, draped with ivy and accessorized with lichen, as if it had an art director and a goddamn wardrobe mistress.
It is simply shameful how rich France is in these perfections. I reeled away from this view into a glowing gem of late Romanesque churchery -- a vault as high as the heavens, and heaven colored too... The prettiest little Virgin and Child in mauve and blue and gilt, the tiles a gay tracery of blue and red. Gold semi-Spanish retablos high on the walls depicted the twelve stations of the cross (I had neither time, energy or chutzpah to climb up on pews and find out, once and for all, what they all are).
I walked down a long, crumbly path to the river -- walked under damp stones to the bridge -- settled my elbows down and adored the river. Because of the fete, everything was closed -- my intention is to come back and have a good blowout on poulet Basquaise at the Hostellerie du Chateau, whose terrace overlooks the bridge.
The one disadvantage of the prospect is that the damp that favors luscious growth among the river plants also favors luscious growth among the river insects. I used my braid as an informal fly switch on my toil up to the car again.