Pyranees, Attempt #1

We really did try to make cheese in the Pyranees, but let me tell you, it was not in the cards. After Elly and I left Chateau Brandeau last week, we went directly to our next farm...our first cheese-making farm! But that's the thing about traveling with the WWOOF program, it's a gambling man's way to see the world. We wanted to bet on this "traditional," "rustic" operation as an idyllic spot, high in the mountains, perfect for learning the old-fashioned way to craft fromage. We really were betting on the wrong horse, though. When we entered the house of our new hosts, it was like stepping back in time 100 years, but not in a romantic way.

Our first red flag was the smell of the house. One of the blessings and curses of inhabiting my body is a very sensitive nose. When I entered our hosts' home that day, my nose was screaming, "There is a male goat sleeping under my new bed and he smells like all the worst parts of a barnyard and a brothel!" I thought that I might gag. Our second scarlet banner was what appeared to be a hoard of sick, screaming children running rampant through the house. There were actually only three of them, but sometimes children have the singular ability to appear to be in all places at once, their tiny voices around you on all sides at once, the affect multiplied by each child added to the mix. Our third giant flashing red light was the filth. I have seen some dirty places and am not easily deterred by a little bit of untidiness, but when I used the bathroom, I can honestly say that the last time it was cleaned was sometime last century. I thought to myself, "It's okay, I can just use the little creek outside to wash up every day;" I could not imagine anything akin to cleaning of one's self happening in that room...my brain said, "Error, error! Clean cannot happen in this room." The fourth pillar of fire in that dark night of our discontent was the cheese making operation itself. When we went outside (mostly to escape the stink), we saw their animals, sheep mostly, all of whom looked like they were in deep negotiations with the Grim Reaper. They all looked so sick and ill-tended, I just wanted to open their little pen and yell, "Be free, little sheep! Get out of here while there's still time!" Elly also saw the cheese making molds floating in a muddy hole next to the creek, covered with green fur. I felt like I was getting food poisoning just hearing about it.

And that's when we decided: no amount of trying or attitude-adjusting is going to make this into an educational or pleasant experience. So, in our very broken French, we politely explained that we would like to go back to the train station, "nous sommes desolee," and apologized for wasting their time. The family was actually quite nice about it and offered to drive us back down the big hill to town so we could find a train to somewhere, anywhere but there. It was at this moment that I had a moment of self-doubt. After all, the family was well-meaning and clearly kind...they were going to take us back to the station and not make a big stink about it. Maybe I had judged too quickly. Maybe I could learn to appreciate with the randy goat odor living under my bed, maybe I would commune with nature in unexpected ways each morning while I bathed in the shivery creek. Maybe I was just being a prissy American.

And then this happened:
The daughter of our hosts was mother to two of the three aforementioned sick and crying children. She was going to take us down to town to catch a train. She simply asked that we watch her children for a moment while she made a phone call. She indicated that her youngest, referred to simply as "bebe," was outside and could we please keep an eye on him for a moment. Elly and I went out to the garden to check in on him, but he simply was not there. We started wandering further and further in circles around the house calling, stupidly, "bebe, bebe!" The kid was nowhere in sight. It was then that I had a mild panic attack, and in the flash of a second I saw with sudden clarity the scene unfold before me: the swift creek by the house, the little child washed downstream, the angry French family blaming us for this tragedy, the imprisonment in the Bastille. At this point the other child wandered out of the house and I swoooped her up, clamping her tightly onto my hip, and thinking, "I am NOT losing this one." I kept asking the little girl, "Ou est ta frere? Ou est ta frere?" She had no idea. I ran down to the creek. Then I hear the mother and grandmother join the fray, screaming "bebe, bebe!" in voiced of clear and awful distress. At the exact moment that my panic was starting to rise up out of my chest into my throat, I heard a cry of relief from the mother. I looked behind me and saw her by the car, holding her child. She explained that before she went into the house to make a phone call, she had put the child into his car-seat, but had simply forgotten she'd put him there. "J'ai oubliee...." she kept saying.

And then I knew with complete clarity that leaving was exactly the right thing to do.

So Elly and I ended up back at the train station a few hours later and considerably more shaken. It was still early afternoon, so I stayed at there to figure out our train options for the day and Elly wandered up to the Tourism Office to try to figure out some lodging for the night and use the phone. She returned with a very small French woman who owned the kindest eyes I've ever seen. Karine was from the Tourism Office and had offered to have us stay at her house for the night while we sorted out our next step. At first Elly and I were a little apprehensive, mostly because of our awful luck just hours before, but this woman was so sweet and nice, we thanked her and got into her little station wagon. She took us to her house, introduced us to her husband Jerome and her son Theo and stuck a beer in each of our hands. Her little house was beautiful and she made up a bed for us in the guest room. Karine is the single most hospitable person I have ever encountered in my life. She shared her homemade foie gras and saucison, refilled our glasses with wine, and insisted that we treat her house as if it were our own. She offered to let us stay longer if we liked to enjoy the Pyranees, and we sat on her porch in the warm evening air, admiring the view of the snowy mountains in the distance. Elly and I decided to go back to our home-base in Aix the next morning and Karine deposited us at the station in the morning, helped us speak to the fellow behind the counter and actually cried when we got on the train. I wanted to put her in my suitcase and take her with me. Because of Karine, I know that this is simply my first attempt as discovering the Pyranees....she's like a promise of gold buried in the hills.