Le Mont St. Michel

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.

View of the rock from the bay

I 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

Our 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 mudflats

Maybe 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.

Beachcombing and St. Malo

I couldn’t believe this was called work. By now, I knew I had lucked out big time with the family that had chosen me to help them. I was their first WWOOFer ever and they were my first WWOOF hosts. While they were audibly worried that they’d work me too hard after hearing reports of poor drifting kids subjected to 12 hours hard labor each day on Spanish farms, I was silently worried I wasn’t working enough and vowed to do whatever I could to compensate for my trip that was slowly becoming a cultural excursion week.

Getting up, Catherine, Michel, Claude, and François, and I made our way to St. Malo for the sole reason that I’d never been there and needed to see it. Feeling a little guilty, but also secretly excited about my Tour de Bretagne, we happily scuttled westward in the family’s anti-GMO van, picnic lunch and all.

Our one pit stop was at Michel’s parents’ house, situated in a one-lane village, comfortably sidled up next to an Atlantic beach guarding masses of mussels and oysters. While François ran off to photograph birds and the rising tide with his tripod, the rest of us headed for the muddy bay, which unashamedly squelched with each bare footstep, making me giggle every time. Armed with violently flapping plastic bags, our mission was to collect as much salicorne, a green plant that sprouts in the bay, the sea water giving it a salty taste, as we possibly could. When low tide hits, it’s time to pick.

Salicorne can be used with garlic, parsley, and butter to accompany fish, poultry, and red meat. When it's soaked in vinegar, salicorne is a great substitute for pickles used with cold meats, fish, and raclette. Catherine sells the popular plant to campers and market-goers. It remains a very popular sale for her as I assume it's hard to find in stores.

That night, Catherine and I stuffed glass jars full of the crop. I got this one to take home.

While the family got straight to work, grabbing at the stalks like they were in a competition to see who could procure the most disappearing currency, I stood like a motionless fool awed by the jaw-dropping silhouette of Mont St. Michel in the far distance. Apparently cultural excursion week had become infectious making my work ethic even harder to find.

This vast, and I mean vast, windswept beach had been the childhood playground of Catherine and Michel’s children. The postcard perfect balcony from the grandparents’ house looked directly out onto the beach, a blinding turquoise band of water filling the window. Lungs inflated with sea air carried in by assertive winds, I didn’t know how life could get any better.

After comparing my pickings to the rest of the family, it was obvious that I hadn’t been as greedy, or more likely, not as efficient. Whatever the case, we eventually washed our mud caked feet in buckets of water supplied by grandma, while her toy-sized dog Zazie ran ladders for entertainment in the grass. Fueled by the juice boxes and the pre-packaged cakes that grandparents can always be counted on to have, we set off for our final destination, St. Malo.

As stunning as St. Malo is, a fortified city planted on a sandy beach, it’s a tourist trap, almost guaranteeing shoulder-to-shoulder contact with strangers inside the ramparts during the summer. When we arrived, it was nothing of the sort. It was early evening, the sun was a giant orange peach sinking slowly toward the horizon, and we’d just splashed about in the warm water for a bit, something that never fails to give me a natural high.

Waves on a St. Malo beach. The posts are there to break the momentum of the waves so they don't damage houses nearby.

On a lovely act of decisiveness by Catherine, we ate our picnic dinner right on a concrete dock behind a line of parked cars and a massive ship tied to land by a rope the size of a human thigh. Spotted with seagull droppings and stained with oil, it was certainly not the most picturesque setting, but we laughed ourselves to tears as tourists walked by and gave us strange looks for eating our dinner in what was really a seaside parking lot. Later, we made up for it by stopping at a gourmet ice cream shop that had a flavor available in saffron.

Rampart walls hug the city and act as sightseeing loop. Here, one can easily imagine how the fortifications blocked both strong sea winds and English attack. We ended our night in a circle. And undoubtedly slept well.

Market Day and Homemade Cheese

In order to remember details heard and seen on the farm in Bretagne, I made notes every night in a red journal stuffed with Greek paper, a gift from Leslie who gave it to me after returning from her trip there.

For me, the farm was one of those experiences that really make you think, enthusiastically opening the mind in a new direction. On the train ride home, I honestly thought I might be able to change the world. I love that feeling. I don’t love the fact that it’s so short lived.

So to continue the tale of my final farm days, weeks later, from a dying, dysfunctional laptop in the US, mental images not burning so bright, yet with the evidence from a small journal:

As a happy frequenter to markets in Europe, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sounds, colors, smells, and sometimes unconventional displays of chow that turning into a meandering tourist who can’t walk a straight line complete with wobbly head looking here and there almost always happens no fail.

When Catherine invited me to help her set up the stand at the Fougères market, I quickly agreed. There would be jam, honey, eggs (that we had collected days earlier), salad, and pigeon for sale. Once I had lined up the display, as shoppers hovered by, the eggs went the fastest. Promises were made, broken, prices forgotten, deals were made for early morning home delivery. It was a flurry of activity that I sat back and watched in awe. All around me villagers had come for miles to sell their wine, herbs, vegetables, cheeses, and meats.

Thinking I might be bored there, Catherine handed me a map to wander around Fougères. I thought it better to be out of the way, but secretly wished I could have worked the market myself.

For lunch, we had galettes, square-like crêpes popular in the northwest made from blé noir (black flour) or what Michel referred to as poor man’s flour. A combination of the fresh air, speaking in French, and navigating the hilly town of Fougères on foot had left me exhausted, but there was still work to do. Picking blackcurrant, I found, was rejuvenating rather than stiffening and monotonous. My thoughts wandered everywhere while I watched the clouds for a possible burst.

Dinner was a bolognaise and afterward the work didn’t cease, at least for the family. Jam cooked on the stove, Michel pitted cherries with a machine, and Catherine stirred milk on another burner to make cheese, a process that takes days. While the milk was heating, she added a few drops of some kind of solidifying agent. The mass was then put into a bowl with tiny holes and left to mutate.

The next day, the cheese was turned over, while a milky white liquid drained away. This is of course added to the chicken feed. Once the mass has completely drained and been flipped, it becomes cheese. The type or name of the cheese depends on the size and shape of the mould it’s put in. Unfortunately, I didn’t stay long enough to taste it, but it was an interesting process to observe.

The little things are really becoming the important ones. One of my favorite parts of the day was taking a shower, rinsing off the day’s work, the skylight open to reveal silhouettes of owl inhabited trees leaning gently in the dark breeze.

Following Le Tour de France

As a result of packing to return to the US and following a few stages of Le Tour, I have to postpone my farm entries until I get back to Chicago.

I will be in Mont Ventoux on July 25th and in Paris on July 26th for the final stage! Vive le Tour!!!! Flying home the 27th...

Ce n'est pas encore la fin.

Day Two: Le Travail Commence

The heat that's been plaguing the Rhone-Alpes really makes me miss the cool mornings in Bretagne and the fresh country air. Opening my windows in Chasse lets in the faint odor of factory pollution and slightly burns my nostrils. I never realized it existed until I left for a farm in the paradise that is northern France.

A glimpse of the farmhouse

Catherine tapped on my door at 8:00am and we had a breakfast of baguette, butter, and jam...the standard French breakfast. Very bready and leaving one hungry again 30 minutes later. Not wasting a crumb, Catherine showed me how to put most of one's leftover food in the bucket for chickens. Chickens, she told me, eat just about anything, while rabbits have very fragile stomachs and will die if they eat the wrong plant. From that moment on, I was terrified to feed the rabbits.

I began by picking cassis or blackcurrant from the dozens of bushes that bordered the donkey pen. It was an incredibly calming activity, making me feel zen-like within minutes. Michel eventually wandered by and told me it was even more serene if done barefoot, the sensation of the earth on the bottom of the feet. He was right. I returned my knee high rubber boots to the shed and disappeared into a world of berries and my thoughts for a few hours, until Claude came out to see the donkeys.

My blackcurrant harvest, Pitchoun keeping me company

She spoke rapid-fire French and I have to admit to nodding and smiling when I couldn't pick up what she was saying. Then, she surprised me by getting on one of the donkeys bareback. The next thing I saw was the donkey bucking and kicking rodeo style, Claude screaming doucement! and seconds later, she was thrown from its back, groaning on the ground. Shocked, I stood still for a good three seconds before reacting. Then dropping my tub of berries, I ran to fetch Catherine who came to her daughter's aid. Saying that Claude was prone to tomber dans les pommes, an expression that means 'to faint,' I tried to explain that she had been at the donkey's mercy instead. After that was eventually cleared up, Claude went inside to rest, while Catherine and I went to go feed the animals.

The guilty holds his head low.

The one thing that bothered me was that every animal we went to go feed would later be killed as food themselves. In fact, we ended up eating an old rooster with chickpeas that night for dinner. It pained me to look at the warbling grey geese and ducks that paddled around in the water, knowing their lives had a foreseen expiration date. Catherine showed me the specific breed of duck that's used to make foie gras. A canard/dinde, or duck with a turkey face that doesn't make any noise when it tries to quack.

After feeding the rabbits and chickens, I spread the dirty hay full of rabbit droppings over a patch of garden, then went upstairs and took a really long nap. The fresh air had happily infected me.

I woke up to the smell of jam cooking on the stove. The scent of the fruit of my labors emanated from the kitchen up the wooden spiral staircase and into my bedroom. Catherine was making jam from the berries that I'd picked that morning. They'd go into glass jars to be sold at the Saturday market in Fougères. Not only was the jam homemade, but so was the glue that held the labels to the jars. Catherine made her own glue with a mix of flour and water heated over the stove.

Groggy from my earlier work, I couldn't believe how she hadn't yet taken a break. After lunch, we'd taken to the garden and removed sick or dead potato plants, then called it a day.

During the evening, I watched a live music program on TV with Michel. Tracy Chapman came on and although Michel hadn't ever heard of her, he was impressed. But as soon as a punk band followed with a Fleetwood Mac cover of White Winged Dove, he turned it off, shaking his head. From there, he unveiled a cabinet full of jazz records and was surprised when I wasn't familiar with the American artists. Not a huge fan of jazz myself, I told him I was open to listening to some it, wondering how he'd gotten into it himself.

The soundtrack for the sunset that evening became Argentinian, Gato Barbieri and Brazilian, Astrud Gilberto. Michel told me that he used to live and work in Lyon during a time of economic prosperity, so he'd treat himself to a concert every week. He'd meet people who introduced all kinds of musicians to him.

I went to sleep that night with jazz notes dancing in my head, wondering what the next day would hold...

Day One at the Farm: Fougères

I owe my reason for WWOOFing to my good friend Kathrin who has done it several times and suggested that I try it while in France. She told me that it was a great way to get to know a different part of the country in an authentic way that's easy on the wallet. I paid for my somewhat expensive train tickets (as they were last minute), packed a bag and set off for Bretagne. The map below gives an idea of my train journey. I left from Lyon in the Rhone-Alpes (17) and traveled to Bretagne (1).

The TGV from Paris sped west through territory unchartered by me before. Leaving the heaving crowds of tourists, the train rolled past open meadows and hills that became brighter shades of green by the minute. My final destination was Fougères, a small ville fleurie with an astonishingly complete medieval castle. From there, the family picked me up in their white van, sporting stickers against chemicals and pesticides. My organic experience was about to begin.

Stone houses in Fougères. The difference of architecture in the north made it feel as though I were in another country.

We drove along small winding roads towards their farm. The family's two children who were in their early twenties had come along for the ride and within twenty minutes we arrived at a large stone farmhouse draped in colorful bursts of flower. I was greeted by a friendly black caniche (poodle) named Pitchoun, a provençal word meaning small, and a cat named Pirate. The interior of the farmhouse glowed from the light wood cupboards, and tables. Jars of medicinal herbs and dried fruit were lined up on the shelves.

The shelf above my bed.

Catherine, the mother, showed me my room, which I absolutely loved as soon as I stepped into it. I especially liked the skylight and the wood paneled ceiling. In order to have total darkness in the room, the woman showed me how to put a painting of Mont St. Michel she did on a piece of wood over the skylight.

After getting settled into my room, Michel, the father, took me on a tour of the farm, and after dinner, the daughter, Claude took me on a stroll through Fougères. She was pretty well-informed on the city, explaining the castle's long history to why the windows were so low to the ground on many houses (so pigs could eat the trash off the streets).

A view of the Fougères castle with stone and timbered houses in the foreground.

Stream running through the neighborhood. To the left are a couple wells (hidden by the flowers) in which women used to wash clothes.

View of Fougères castle from ramparts.

Claude told me that this was one of her favorite places in the city, perfect for watching un coucher du soleil. As you continue ascending the stairs, you can see more and more of the castle, which used to be made entirely of wood until it burned down and took a lot of the city with it. The stone towers were rebuilt, but interestingly enough all during different time periods.

Yellow timbered houses

These houses look like they've come straight out of a fairy tale, but are still inhabited. Michel informed me that the reason why the houses are top heavy or jut out more on top is because the higher one lived, the less taxes one had to pay. As most people weren't rich enough to pay taxes to live at street level, more people lived higher up, needing more space than below.

By the time we got back to the farm, I was exhausted...and hadn't yet worked! That would come the next day...

Gone WWOOFing

From July 2-9, I'll be volunteering on an organic farm in northern France in Bretagne. I have no idea what to expect, but I'm excited to be working outdoors where it'll hopefully be cooler than here in the Lyon area. I'm looking forward to hiking, reading, and escaping Chasse for a week. Will report back soon...