A few hours west of Paris lies the Alsace region of France, an area filled with castles, wineries and half-timbered houses.
We’ve only just landed here and begun to explore, but I knew the minute I opened my window that I would love this place. Old tiles dripping with vines, tiny dormers, pink walls, and glimpses of the city awaiting us — a pedestrian’s dream-come-true.
We’re tucked away on the third floor of an ancient building owned by a family that’s been growing grapes here since the early 16th century. Luckily, they also rent rooms and apartments. It’s a funky place that requires climbing two flights of rickety wooden stairs, but for the next seven days … it’s home.
It’s August in Paris, a time when vacationers throng the boulevards and Parisians flee the city, decamping to the Alps or the Riviera. For those who remain, there is Paris-Plage, a series of “beaches” along the Seine.
I saw them from above, strolling along the quay on a perfect late summer afternoon. People sauntering, sipping, basking in the sun.
It’s funny to think of Paris needing to sell itself as anything other than what it already is: a sophisticated European capital, site of the 2024 Olympics, a mecca for writers, thinkers and artists everywhere.
But, as I’m learning on this visit, it’s also a home, full of apartment buildings with plant-filled balconies, of neighborhood bistros and parks where you least expect them. I love seeing this Paris. It makes me appreciate the great city all the more.
If all goes according to plan we will be in Paris this morning. Paris, home to one of my dearest friends, who I haven’t seen in nine years.
The City of Light is popular this year, given the weeks-long advertisement for it that was last year’s summer Olympics. Whenever I caught one of the events, I remember thinking that the real winner was the city. Had Paris ever looked so radiant?
We’re here to find out. And much more. To chat, to catch up, to explore. The last time I saw Paris was during a European heat wave with my still-growing girls. The first time I saw Paris I was as an awestruck 20-year-old.
I’m better on some trips than others. Ironically, the longer excursions require more discipline, more ruthlessness. Packing light is not for the faint of heart.
But after lugging large suitcases up and down the stairs of broken escalators, after being unable to hoist my bag into the overhead storage unit, I’m determined that the next trip, which begins today, be a leaner, lighter one.
And so the winnowing has begun, began days ago, to be honest. I started out with a universe far larger than the final subset, made some calculations (no hiking boots, fewer shirts) and jettisoned. When I reached what I thought was a suitable compromise, I threw everything in my bag and picked it up. Not bad, so I pulled everything out to pack it properly.
I have time for one more round of belt-tightening, though. I’m hoping the bag I take to the airport in a few hours is lighter still.
(My old, much-battered, too-large suitcase — may it rest in peace.)
It may not look like much, but it’s an improvement, two crosswalks instead of one, new crossing lights, and paved walkways on the corners (notable since my neighborhood has no sidewalks). The intersection is finally becoming a walker’s corner.
For weeks this summer workers busied themselves erecting poles, stringing wires, pouring concrete. I couldn’t figure it out at first. All I knew was that traffic funneled into one lane and it took longer to get through the light.
But then they finished up and the mess made sense, though it seems an empty gesture in some ways. My area is more walkable than it used to be, but it’s no walker’s paradise. I routinely drive to walk because it’s more pleasant to stroll when you aren’t fanned by 60-mile-an-hour tailwinds.
But every effort helps, and this corner has long needed some love. If pedestrianism is part of the picture, so much the better.
I used to take these walks often. Nightcaps, I’d call them. Not the brisk, efficient stroll of early mornings but a saunter, an exhale. I took another last night, pulled outside by the dying light.
I strolled through pockets of warmth and coolness, bent down with outstretched palm to feel the heat still radiating from the pavement. Traces of the day as it fled.
Bats have been in short supply this summer but I saw two darting across patches of open sky. Trees seemed larger, hulking, like fairy tale specimens. Nature reasserting itself, nighttime claiming its own. I ambled through it, was filled by it.
I woke up the other day to a deer grazing in the yard. She was munching on what passes for grass, a mixture of weeds but pleasing to her, it seemed. At first, I only saw the doe. Then a small shape moved close to her, a still-spotted fawn. It must be the baby born here in June.
We’ve tried sprays and powders, gates and fencing. Neighbors have set up a sonic system to deter them. But the deer are hungry; they eat whenever and wherever they can. And there are many of them.
Used to be I’d run out in the yard and wave my arms when I saw deer, anything to banish them. But it was early; I was half-asleep. Resigned, I watched the pair as the doe stared straight at me. My child was born here, she seemed to say with that plaintive look. Doesn’t she have as much claim to this place as you do?
Last night I threw open the windows to let the cool air in. No fans required.
I love the whir of a fan on a hot summer night, but without the fan I could hear the insect noise, the crescendoing song of katydids, crickets and other creatures of the night.
The room cooled naturally, a simple transference, cool air instead of warm, night air instead of day.
Was that why I slept so well? Probably not. But it must have helped.
Yesterday I watched an old movie that’s haunted me since I was a child. “The Final Voyage” chronicles the last days of an aging ocean liner. When the boiler explodes it traps a woman (played by actress Dorothy Malone) under tons of steel and maroons her child in the corner of a room that no longer has a floor.
The little girl’s father (Robert Stack) must rescue her. He tries several methods before hitting on the only one that he thinks will work. The young girl must crawl across a flimsy board with a makeshift harness around her chest. If she falls it means certain death. The minute I saw this scene I knew it was the one I’d remembered. Apparently, a real ship was sunk to make the movie, which accounts for the immediacy of the drama.
I’m not sure how I ended up watching this film, nightmare material for sure. But viewing it again as an adult — the search for an acetylene torch to free Malone, the bravery exhibited by some of the characters, the cowardice of others — well, it wasn’t “Titanic” but it held my interest.
I first read Lynn Darling’s Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding shortly after it was published in 2014, and I wrote about it here. It was a Kindle book, one I can no longer access easily, so I put it on my birthday wish list, and just finished reading it again, this time in hard copy.
Re-reading a book that struck a chord is always risky. Will it still put the world to rights? Will it still make my heart sing?
I’m happy to say that this book did. Whether it means I’m still finding my own way (I am) or that the writing holds up (it does), I can’t say exactly. Probably a little of both.
I pulled out my pen often to scrawl notes on an index card. “So much of direction, of having a sense of direction, is bound up in a sense of place, of knowing where home lies even when you don’t know exactly where you are,” Darling writes.
She makes an argument here for long acquaintance with a locale, for knowing it so well that you’ve named the trees. But at the end of her memoir she leaves her home in the Vermont woods and moves back to Manhattan, a place that was “both present and past.”
What I took from this book upon second reading is the importance of remaining flexible as we age. Yes, we might move to the Vermont woods in search of solitude. But what’s to stop us from moving back to a bustling city four years later, if we can afford it and that’s what we want? Finding our way means staying open to all the possibilities of life, to changing our minds and accepting the detours, no matter when or how often they come.
