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‘Cette grotte est l’œuvre finale de Frère Barthelemy,” reads an engraved marble slab adorning the grotto beside which I have propped my bike. The grotto is carved out of the forest by a diverging stream and shelters a wooden sculpture of the Virgin Mary. She is surrounded by bouquets of fresh flowers.
It appears this grotto is the main attraction in Roseires d’Amont, a quiet village perched in the foothills of the French Alps near the border with Switzerland. Aside from a mother and baby out for a walk, the streets are empty.
My husband wrestles our sandwiches out of the panniers on his bike. The baguette is loaded with rosette, a type of salami particular to Lyon, and Comté, the local version of Gruyère. Next, he produces a Thermos filled with red wine. Our children are safely lunching at school. Life doesn’t get much more idyllic.
“Oh no, I forgot the GoPro,” comments my husband. I shrug. Between his video footage and my photographs and blog posts, almost every moment of our year in France has been documented – a year that fell into place thanks to the progressive benefits afforded public service employees in British Columbia.
The experience has been transformative for every member of our family, aged 4 to 44. Travel has moulded our children so thoroughly that I can see in their baby blues the glimmer of globally aware citizens.
What will it be like for children of this generation to reach adulthood in possession of thousands of photos and videos recording every marginally significant event of their young lives? Will it rob those carefree days of their mystical power? For me, photos of my childhood are awash in ambiguity, largely on account of the fuzzy memories I have to retrieve to give them any context. I am hopeful that, as adults, my boys will occasionally poke around our digital albums and reminisce about family adventures, but these images are mostly for my benefit – a way to relive a time when I was showered daily with exuberant hugs and kisses.
Despite all my efforts to freeze time and store it in the cloud, it is most often the moments that elude my lens that lodge themselves in my memory. Our recent journey to the summit of Aiguille du Midi in Chamonix was a prime example.
In order to claim our spot on the gondola, we queued up behind dozens of tourists as the sun crested over Western Europe’s highest peak, Mont Blanc. At that hour, the tourists were of the sporting variety. They formed a patchwork of brilliant Patagonian colours, punctuated at intervals by skis, ice axes and crampons.
Frowning at our télécabine tickets, my husband and I were fantasizing about chasing the skiers down the mountain. But this was not a kid-friendly slope and even if we could have found somewhere to deposit the children at ground level, it would have meant depriving them of the once-in-a-lifetime view.
Here’s how this unforgettable experience played out: Within 10 minutes of our arrival on the summit terrace, our eldest announced he wanted to go back to the hotel pool. The laments about the pool continued until we passed through a multimedia presentation on altitude sickness – when, lo and behold, our clever boy developed a debilitating head-and-stomach-ache. These became so acute, he had to lie down on the deck and roll around. Rather than waste any energy on the mind-boggling views in every direction, our still-healthy child focused his efforts on making his brother’s condition as miserable as possible by sitting on his head. These are the moments of which memories are made: No amount of GoPro footage could do them justice.
On the country road where my husband and I have just finished our picnic beside the grotto, a duo of elite cyclists zooms past. We strap on our ski helmets, climb onto our borrowed bikes and head home. I concentrate on the walls of crumbling rock, the collapsing wood-and-stucco farmhouses, the grazing cattle with udders heavy with milk. The air smells alternately of cow manure and freshly cut grass. Church bells mark the hour. My ears tune in to birdsong, buzzing insects, the squelch of mud under my tires.
If I focus on these things intensely enough, will I be able to access traces of them when I’m gazing out the window at the nursing home 40 years from now? Can I mount them to the grotto in my mind, bedeck them with fresh flowers and pray the colours don’t fade? What if I arrive at the end of my journey and nothing remains but the digital images, the defunct WordPress blog?
“And therein lies the whole of man’s plight,” wrote Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. “Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.”
Our year in France is drawing to an end. There will never be another one like it. I appease my heavy heart by fantasizing about retiring here one day. So many stars must align for that to happen – constellations contrived from our health, our finances, our family obligations. Better to live these final dreamy days in Europe to the fullest, pedalling onward, pausing only to snap the odd picture.
Kate Wiley will return soon to her home in Victoria.