With each visit to the Perigord, I find the affect to be cumulative. I seem to evolve and not by trying, but by being in the moment. Almost dumbstruck by the immediacy , what I see and feel and the smallest interactions I have over little nothings with my neighbors, change me. As I walk up the tractor road behind the barn, I feel the difference.  Everything within me slows down.

This list of words  describe what I experience simply by the taking of a country breath and looking into the hills.
Wonder Awe
Enrichment
Change
Transformation
Calming
Opening
Responsiveness
Insight

To name a few.

With each visit, I become a new and different person. Through observation, thinking outside my own culture. embracing things that can be fun and maddening at the same time and by just being quiet. Being still. Long lanquid seasons, wonderful fresh air, long hours of daylight, fresh organic produce. Healing transformation. A true meta vacance. Is it any wonder that years ago, looking out over the fields, this idea for retreats appeared to me in the waning light of a fall day?

When I got my new pup in 2003 and she immediately, at 5 months, demonstrated not only precosity and smarts, but sheer courage and flexibility, I decided she would make a fine overseas traveling companion. So after our first month together, I decided to take her to France with me for the holidays.

Since I would be traveling with her by train (four beautiful hours from Paris), I decided that perhaps it would be wise to teach her commands in both French and English. Who better than to ask than my friend’s tri-lingual 5 year old?  So thanks to Agneska, Slaine managed, with jet lag, to learn a few new word tricks.

Happily this has met with great approval with French people whether on a country lane or the streets of Paris. Turns out both babies and pups rank very high. And if a pooch comes when called in French, sits and shakes hands, tant mieux!

Time and experiences have unfolded, and lucky Slaine, now 2.5  years has been to France four times! Not only has she charmed the 2 leggeds, but has many 4 legged friends as well. With a variety of French friends of her own, Lylla, Pertus, Lola, Uni, and Kali, to name a few she sees regularly on walks or at he market, Slaine’s good humor and playful disposition have helped to further Franco American rapprochement, one paw at a time.

(Originally written after a long afternoon’s romp by the river with Slaine’s 4 legged French friends, Lylla and Pertus
and my old friend Molly, whose love of the Dordogne region quickly entered my pysche 25 years ago) Fall, 2005

I come here to the Perigord in the Spring and the Fall. Technically speaking that is. I leave my stateside home on a snowy March New England day and arrive to forsythia in bloom. Within the week, the fruits of my bulb labor emerge for the first time in my stone walled garden. My first tulips ever in France, dedicated to my late puppies, Bingley, Casey and Quinn.

Soon, I realize, I also have lilacs, and in profusion. And suddenly I am in shirt sleeves and then patting around chez moi in shorts. Could this really be early April?

The grass grows from green to greener. The landscape comes alive with all sorts of insistent, surround- sound bird song. They must be singing in French because I can not identify their chansons.

Oh wait, what about the acacia? That divine heady scent that permeates the air for weeks at time, giving our morning and
evening walks new dimension and meaning.

And then there is the length of the day light. Ooh la la! By early June, its light until 9 pm. By the end of June, the magic of 8 pm feels like 3 in the afternoon. Sunset is remembered on the terrace of my favorite restaurant, Le Pont de L’Ouysse, where under the linden trees at 10 pm, the twilight lingers until a bewitching 10:30.

Long languid days. Long languid seasons,  a moment of remembrance of winter here.  But then spring, with a soupcon of  summer heat . All within 2 short months. So many sensations a l’exterieur.

Then conversely, I return to France in fall. Immediately I begin to shed the layers of New England. This is no New England landscape. The fields are very brown from a rainless, dry summer. The trees are still steadfastly green and will remain so until December. It’s still warm, 72 degrees and no humidity The sun sets at 8:30. I defy my memories of summer meals outdoors in New England and enjoy meal after meal a l’exterieur, here on the terrace- breakfast, lunch and dinner. A few days of very light showers and bingo, the fields turn bright green. Its miraculous and like summer as I remember it in August in the Berkshires.

It’s October and Indian summer goes on and on! The lightest of jackets and nylon mesh hiking boots. Shirt sleeved 5 hour randonees in Loubressac and Autoire. Leaves linger, and remain green. No need or compunction for a fire at night. Better to go for a walk and sit on the terrace afterwards and write these thoughts.

Mid November, a touch more rain, but happily welcomed,  kissing the new parched garden I have planted. I wonder what it will look like when I return next spring? All these lilacs and rosemary. What perfume awaits the next round of outdoor meals! Seems so abstract here in the Mill Masters House in gray January New England.

So many seasonal sensations in so few months. It makes the time seem to go slower and slower. Not since I was a child do I remember time seeming to stand still. Could it be taking time for time? Being in the moment? Meditating? Or does la mere de nature have something to do with it too?

(Originally written in October and November, 2005, with longings and copy editing back here in New England on a snowy
December evening)

Without getting into politics, I feel that my presence here in France is, in some small way, a gesture of diplomacy for Franco American relations. Whereas I am an often time and grateful visitor here, I am still the American living in the barn.

I try never to speak English and find with more and more practice, improvements to my language skills. But not without an aching head! And a strong will to conjure up those old classes in high school.

From time to time as I strain to comprehend, and moreover answer my French friends over the course of an evening, I  return home weary. Not from the wine but from the concentration and observation of it all.

It is a good weary though- a sense of accomplishment, both for my comprehension and because by trying I am establishing
new friends in a foreign country.

It does my heart good, after an evening of conversation to be told that a) I have a decent accent, even a good one and b) I am not at all what they have imagined an American to be, based on what they view on tv.

Not only can we change ourselves through our inward journeys, but we can have an outward affect on others, just when we least
expect it. And by embracing things that are just outside our own realm, we stretch and grow, while having fun (and eating well).

(Originally written after having dinner with my neighbors over the Toussaint Holiday- October 31, 2005)

Well , I came down to the kitchen way too early this morning,
owing to the pooch asking to go out. Since she is really a late sleeper.
I thought I would empty her, get myself a cup of tea and head back
to bed for a little read. More on my current book, later.

Somehow, owing to an email received during the night from France,
from one talented painter named Julian Merrow-Smith, (see his
site, shiftinglight.com) I got way off track on a tangent. The tangent
in question is the Blog.

Now, this is the 3rd live posting I have made to my fledging blog.
I am also a computer luddite, but today, this morning, I have
discovered a whole new world! And it may awaken a new passion for me
and my ordinateur (computer)

And that is a cyber world, filled with Francophiles! Francophiles
who post blogs, and good ones about their and my passion- la belle France.

Julien’s (the painter above, if you lost the thread) site lead me to his equally talented wife’s site (ruthphillips.com) which lead me to a list of French related blogs that kept begetting and begetting .

It became truly mindblogging.

But even though I had to stop my new obsession, my heart was warmed
to know that while I sit in (today) sunny New England, counting the days
until I can return to the Dorodgne, I can enjoy the musings of others also
in love with France. All the while having an armchair fix.

Now it is 10am and the pooch is once again angling this time for her true
walk, so I must be off.

The book that did not get read this morning is called Families of the Vine-
by Michael S. Sanders. Don’t miss it or his older one of the same region of
France- the Lot called From Here You Can’t See Paris. The particulars of
the newer book will soon be published under Selected Reading on my site.
He writes of an area just 40 minutes south of where our workshops take place.

Happy French blogging….. vive la france en cyberspace!