Arresting view of Mont St. Michel from the road.My second visit to Mont St. Michel, one of France’s most visited attractions and teeming with tourists in the summer, came unexpectedly, unplanned, and seven years after my maiden voyage during college. Our group was an international mix of French, Mexican, and American. None of us knew one another well at all. Some of us had trouble communicating, but we managed to conquer northern France’s sacred beast of an abbey sitting on a rock in the middle of Normandy’s colorless windswept mudflats, just fine.
The giant abbey in the sky
Claude opted out of touring the abbey (which by the way is absolutely essential if making one’s way all the way out there) because she lives conveniently close and for her, a trip to Mont St. Michel is like a jaunt to the skyscrapers and lakefront of Chicago for me. Almost comparable. While the Mexican couple did an audio guide tour in Spanish, I surrendered to a guided tour in English by a French man who’d lived in England for seventeen years and had the most wicked sense of humor.
Surprisingly tourist-less cloister
Somberly enough, I’ve just learned today from an alumni magazine that the university professor who had taken a group of us to France and Mont St. Michel in 2002 had died this past February. He had been 85 on that trip and had walked everywhere with us. I think, even at 22, I was too young to realize the enormity of the history behind the 1,300 year construction of Mont St. Michel. I wonder if he’d been frustrated with our naïve attitudes, our surface-level comprehension of this extraordinary architectural wonder.
As I embarked on my second guided tour, I couldn’t help but be slightly annoyed at my younger self, idiotically having seen the rooms more through a camera lens rather than my own eyes and fantasizing about the bus ride back and being able to rest, rather than imagining sleep deprived pilgrims who had come from far away, risking their safety to cross the temperamental tides and mud flats dotted with quicksand traps.
This time, I let it all sink in. The guide’s humorous anecdotes certainly helped. We learned that the abbey is in the shape of a cross, so as to remain stable and not crumble down the pyramid-like granite base on which it’s perched. Miraculously, either in order to convince myself that I had grown up a little and could maintain a longer attention span, or because of an unfaltering desire to get my 8.50 EUR worth, one month later, I still remember several “fact or fiction?!” tales from our guide. Because he was so good, I tolerated his perma phrase: ‘you know, the truth is usually stranger than fiction.’
Dragon slaying Saint Michael, after whom the abbey and surrounding bay are named was thought to weigh souls on a balance to decide who went to heaven or hell. Making a pilgrimage to the rock would surely grant one passage into heaven, right? If anything, all that walking would rid the soul of a few pounds. Everyone’s favorite new fact and sure to be story at the first barbecue of the summer was where the word barbecue had supposedly originated. Jumpstarting the snoozing mood from a discussion on the daily habits of the Mont St. Michel monks, our guide led us to a grand fireplace and explained that pigs were roasted from head to toe or more intimately from beard (barbe in French) to ass (cul). When the English speakers arrived, their anglicized pronunciation of “barbe cul” morphed into “barbecue,” unknowingly coining a phrase that is not only practiced, but recognized just about everywhere on earth.
I've become addicted to learning word origins as their birth sometimes occurs so haphazardly. One would think a new word develops from hours of contemplation, brainstorming, and running one’s tongue over its syllables in a kind of scientific trial and error method before announcing the final product. As in the origins of barbecue, this appears not to be the case.
After a quick multilingual picnic lunch on the back doorstep of a tourist shop with a superb view of horse-led guides into the bay, our group made our way down the Mont with the intention of doing something similar. In fact, anyone can wander into the bay or surrounding mud flats sans guide, but as it’s easy to become stranded on an island of quicksand, sneakily enveloped by a strong current of water that seems to appear from nowhere, guides are recommended.
Surprisingly tourist-less cloisterSomberly enough, I’ve just learned today from an alumni magazine that the university professor who had taken a group of us to France and Mont St. Michel in 2002 had died this past February. He had been 85 on that trip and had walked everywhere with us. I think, even at 22, I was too young to realize the enormity of the history behind the 1,300 year construction of Mont St. Michel. I wonder if he’d been frustrated with our naïve attitudes, our surface-level comprehension of this extraordinary architectural wonder.
As I embarked on my second guided tour, I couldn’t help but be slightly annoyed at my younger self, idiotically having seen the rooms more through a camera lens rather than my own eyes and fantasizing about the bus ride back and being able to rest, rather than imagining sleep deprived pilgrims who had come from far away, risking their safety to cross the temperamental tides and mud flats dotted with quicksand traps.
This time, I let it all sink in. The guide’s humorous anecdotes certainly helped. We learned that the abbey is in the shape of a cross, so as to remain stable and not crumble down the pyramid-like granite base on which it’s perched. Miraculously, either in order to convince myself that I had grown up a little and could maintain a longer attention span, or because of an unfaltering desire to get my 8.50 EUR worth, one month later, I still remember several “fact or fiction?!” tales from our guide. Because he was so good, I tolerated his perma phrase: ‘you know, the truth is usually stranger than fiction.’
Dragon slaying Saint Michael, after whom the abbey and surrounding bay are named was thought to weigh souls on a balance to decide who went to heaven or hell. Making a pilgrimage to the rock would surely grant one passage into heaven, right? If anything, all that walking would rid the soul of a few pounds. Everyone’s favorite new fact and sure to be story at the first barbecue of the summer was where the word barbecue had supposedly originated. Jumpstarting the snoozing mood from a discussion on the daily habits of the Mont St. Michel monks, our guide led us to a grand fireplace and explained that pigs were roasted from head to toe or more intimately from beard (barbe in French) to ass (cul). When the English speakers arrived, their anglicized pronunciation of “barbe cul” morphed into “barbecue,” unknowingly coining a phrase that is not only practiced, but recognized just about everywhere on earth.
I've become addicted to learning word origins as their birth sometimes occurs so haphazardly. One would think a new word develops from hours of contemplation, brainstorming, and running one’s tongue over its syllables in a kind of scientific trial and error method before announcing the final product. As in the origins of barbecue, this appears not to be the case.
After a quick multilingual picnic lunch on the back doorstep of a tourist shop with a superb view of horse-led guides into the bay, our group made our way down the Mont with the intention of doing something similar. In fact, anyone can wander into the bay or surrounding mud flats sans guide, but as it’s easy to become stranded on an island of quicksand, sneakily enveloped by a strong current of water that seems to appear from nowhere, guides are recommended.
View of the rock from the bayI wasn’t about to nearly finish my time in France, then end up being stuck there, literally. We departed from the base of Mont St. Michel in rain jackets, shorts and bare feet. My child-like excitement to hike to a distant island 3 km resulted from having no shoes. I was giddy to let my toes and feet sink into Normandy, then pull them out, creating all sorts of onomatopoeic fun.
The bay hike begins
Horse and rider on the mudflats
The bay hike beginsOur guide tested the surprisingly strong bands of water current arbitrarily shaping the mudflats. Bouts of wind blasts and sheets of rain subsequently shaped and re-shaped the looks on our faces like clowns full of expression in a slow motion cartoon. The solitary island turned out to be a bird sanctuary, useful for the birds in case they needed a break from flapping their wings. The wind would easily keep them floating motionless in air.
As desolate as the mudflats appear to be, they are perfect terrain for horse racing. The ground is neither too hard nor too soft. This is convenient, seeing as Normandy has the most horses of any other region in France. They seem to fit into the landscape, the old fashioned mode of transportation giving Mont St. Michel a timeless feel. That is, until a glance at the parking lot pops that imagination bubble.
Horse and rider on the mudflatsMaybe that's why days of bay hikes, races, and getting stuck then helicoptered out are numbered. In order to make Mont St. Michel more aesthetically pleasing, the government wants to permanently fill the bay with water, making the abbey adorned rock a true island, with a bridge providing access rather than the causeway. Considering this idea has existed through Chirac's presidency and that the speed at which the French "get things done" has never been record-breakingly fast, I'm fairly certain we all have a little more time to pretend our feet are being eaten by quicksand in the bay of Mont St. Michel.
