From the Corderie we went outside and walked the Gardens of Return, a modern replica of the gardens that had existed here in the yards heyday. The plants represented all the flora of distant lands visited by the French navy. The area had been left to rot after the yards were abandoned and the fire set by the Nazis had been the last insult. The entire complex was rebuilt after 1960's. We walked the lawns and a path through the trees and found the rigging area, a pair of masts rising high against a brilliant blue sky.
We walked out of the garden towards the pleasure port, past the four star hotel. Next to it was a burned out hulk of a building, rotting with age, filled with broken wine bottles and ceramic jugs. The pleasure port was full of boats but empty of people and we left quickly. Kinda creepy.
The spiders are out in full force weaving strands of spider's silk across impossible distances and crawling into everything. Our bikes, our backpacks, our hair.
We found a phone to call home, our weekly check in, but a Frenchman asked if he could use it first, swearing that he only needed it for a minute. Ten minutes later we left, seeking another phone. We found a trio of phone boxes in a square not two feet away, in the shadow of St. Louis's church, a columned building recessed from the street, done in Roman style. We chatted with my parents, shocked to discover that, on a day in which it had become too hot for us to wear our jeans and long sleeved t-shirts, it had snowed at home.
As Heather took her turn at the phone I watched the life of the square around us. A fountain splashed with life in the centre. A young couple made out in the shadow of a tree. An old man sat on the edge of the fountain while a young baby almost fell in only to be scolded by his frightened mother. Old men fed birds while old women read the news or watched me watching them. The sidewalk cafes bustled with life. The couple got up and left, the girl cuffing the boy as his gaze wandered to the life sized, almost nude, ads in the lingerie shop across from us. The square seemed full of life. People with lives to lead, leading them. Even we seemed a perfect part of the picture, a tourist couple, dressed the part, calling home to reassure worried parents, while we secretly collapsed from exhaustion. I half expected a Hollywood director to scream cut and everything to freeze. But it never happened.
We hung up and walked into the church, good tourists that we were. But we were very tired and the sun had almost completed it's tiny arc across the sky and the church, despite it's impressive exterior, had almost crumbled to nothing inside, given glory only by it's elaborate altar.
We returned home via the Pont Transborder, which I discovered has been translated as the "aerial ferry." Built in 1908 instead of 1901, by Ferdinand Arnodin. An impressive idea, impressively executed, that now fails to impress. Poor Ferdinand.
The ride home is much like the ride out, though we do encounter a crew paving the cycle paths, who stare with consternation as I almost ride into their newly laid patch of tar. Whether worried about me or their tar, I don't know. We try to follow the path through the marshes as long as possible, a plan that leads to us getting trapped when the path ran out and forced us to climb a ditch back onto the road we had been trying to avoid. We arrived at our tent, to a campground full of people, and we felt good even if a little tired. It is nice to share a campground with people and know that we are not totally insane.
A group of four men play boules beside our site, in fact they are doing it now as I write, a ritual of unknown antiquity played out in endless repetitions. We try to go out for a walk after the sun has set but the mist is too thick. We are driven back to our campsite which is soon covered in a sheen of water as the night sweats. We talk about faith and spirituality and the order of the universe.
I postulate a universe surrounded by a god so complex as to make the ordeal of understanding the Trinity child's play by comparison while a satellite flies its path through the nether regions of the constellation Cassiopeia. Somewhere God giggles.
Today has been the antithesis of yesterday. We have done almost nothing. I walked slowly out to the end of the our small dock and scribbled a few lines and gave up, instead standing to watch the dock writhe in the wake of a cargo freighter as it makes its way to the ocean. I work some more sitting at the table, watching the sun descend too quickly once more. We went in to town to buy groceries and for the twentieth time I marvel at the seafood counter. I played with the clams snapping in their search for food, unaware of any irony in their actions. I watched as some shellfish crawled from his shell and tried to escape his basket prison, sure that if he survived, I would be watching evolution at work.
We flipped through the posters. French absorption of American pop culture is a few years behind Canada, so everything was just a touch out of date. But what caught our attention most were the world maps and how far we have yet to go. Rome didn't seem so far away when we were in Canada. A pamphlet describing Lafayette tells that it took him 38 days to join Washington in American and lend his aid. 38 days means so much more now. 38 days on a cramped wood and hemp and cloth ship. I wonder if it was better than a tiny tent and a leather seat.
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