Cockadoodle Doo or Cocorico?

 We stood in the middle of the road, having walked together 13 miles that day and Claudine grasped my forearm.

"Mais non! It doesn't make sense. It doesn't sound like that at all!" she insisted. 

This passionate response from my French friend came after she asked me what we say in America for the sound a rooster makes. 

Maybe I didn't sell it to her, I think, and I make a crowing sound like "Cock a doodle doo!"

"Non, it's cocorico. It sounds just like a rooster!" she insisted. 

"It sounds like a drink," I insisted. "I'll have a cocorico in Puerto rico."

We were both bent over laughing as we continued walking down the road, the sun shining on us after walking five and a half hours so far. We had started that morning in Figeac, France, in the Lot region. We'd left behind the more extreme mountain climbs in the Aude for rolling hills and homes built of bleached stone with carefully sculpted roof tiles. We planned to walk four days along one of the many trails that lead to El Camino de Santiago in Spain. In France, the routes are called Chemin de Saint Jacque de Compostelle 

On Tuesday we dropped the car in St. Cirq la Popie, our ending point, and we took the bus back to Figeac. We found a restaurant in Figeac, eating dinner at 8 p.m. When we opened the menu, we nearly fainted at the perfection. I had told Claudine on the bus that I hadn't eaten foie gras or duck since I'd been back in France. Then we searched for a restaurant that served foie gras. We ended up at La Puce a l'Oreille in Figeac. Starting with foie gras then moving on to magret de canard (duck). 

"If we eat foie gras for dinner every night, we'll gain many kilos before we get home," Claudine pointed out before taking a bite of the starter and pausing for the sheer pleasure of it in her mouth. 

If ever there was a meal fit for the word sublime, this was it.  The setting, the service, the food. Surely we were ready for our hike the next day. 

The jovial host at the B&B saw us off after coffee and croissants. We stopped at a bakery for a baquette sandwich -- jambon sec, butter and lettuce. The bakery server cut the sandwich in two so we could share it later. And, voila, we were off. The trail would be 21 kilometers from the Figeac to Corn. 

Corn is a strange name for a town, but in France, they don't call corn corn. They call it maïs with two syllables. A fairly steep climb took us out of Figeac, but the entire hike, 15 miles, we only climbed about 1400 feet, which we struggle up in 45 minutes leaving our town.

Hiking long distances in France is very different from the United States. We don't carry tents and sleeping bags. We don't pack our bags with beans and rice to eat over a fire. We walk from town to town and sleep in a gites or B and B. We have dinner in a restaurant or at the host's table. 

After a few hours of hiking, we ventured through the village Faycelles and stopped to take pictures of the irises lining stone steps. At the top, we stopped for coffee and a panoramic view of the valley and river below. 

Two hours later in Beduer, we walked into town to find that the only store near the trail had closed at 12:30. We couldn't buy drinks for lunch, but we had our water and our sandwich. Claudine had brought along two pain au chocolat from the day before, so we had those for dessert as we sat at a concrete table by the cathedral with a view of a nearby chateau. We chatted with hikers from Canada, from Nantes and Orleans France. Most of the hikers on this trail are from France. 

During our six hour hike, Claudine had declared it "French speaking only" so that I could practice my French. Walking and following trail markers and trying to speak only French, it was a challenge. But by the end of the day, I wondered if I'd be able to speak English when I called Earl later. 

We walked a few kilometers outside of Corn to our BnB, thinking we would never get there. Stopping to take pictures of a field of poppies. A climb up to the BnB and we were greeted by a giant white Great Pyrenees dog with deep woofs.

Finally, after 15 miles, 22 kilometers, we could take our shoes off our tired feet. Rinse the salt of sweat from our bodies and enjoy another great meal, this time of cucumber in creme fraiche for starters then couscous with lamb and carrots followed by gelato. 

Restful Sleep

First, shameless self promotion: my novel The Summer of France is only 99 cents on Kindle today, both in the U.S. and the U.K.
Here's a review that was posted yesterday on Amazon by someone who calls herself  "crazy for reading"

Loved this story! I stayed up till after midnight each night reading it after my family went to bed. So many twists and turns I didn't want to quit.

If you haven't read it, hope you'll give it a try.

Today, my family will gather again, five adults in our small house, for another week before my sons head off to college next week. (Grace is in and out since she has an apartment about 20 minutes away.)
But on the first night that I spent home alone since...forever maybe, I went to bed and did not wake  up for seven hours, until the cat jumped on me at 6 a.m.
Some people think that sleep is only disrupted while kids are babies, but I can tell you that teenagers disrupt sleep even more.

Here's Tucker in his portable hammock. He looks kind of bored.

In my house, someone is pretty much always awake and rambling around the house. They come in at different hours. They're searching for food at 3 in the morning. The television in the living room may be too loud. The floors squeak, the toilet flushes.
I cannot remember the last time that I went to sleep and was oblivious to everything until the next morning.
It was beautiful.
Of course, part of that restful sleep might have to do with the fact that I knew the boys were with their father camping, rather than on a college campus, where they might or might not find trouble. So I may not sleep so peacefully once they've moved to college.
I'd better enjoy them while I can!

Many Happy Returns

I've really been a lax blogger recently, and I apologize. I seem to be racing from one seeming emergency to the next and in between, I just collapse. No real emergencies, just everyday life of teaching college and raising teenagers.
People are emailing to say things like, "Are you going to post that review?" and "Weren't you going to send me a copy of your book?" or "Did you ever manage to download that thing I sent you?" and I realize that my to-do list may have fallen by the wayside.
However, the weekends offer a respite and I plan to take advantage, especially now that my husband has limped home, I mean returned triumphantly, from his camping/hiking/canoeing trip. I'm sure he'll have pictures that I can share once he's awake. For now, he's sleeping in a real bed and maybe remembering that camping in  your 50s isn't as much fun as camping in your 30s.
He got home sometime after 2, so I was in bed obviously. He came in to kiss me goodnight, ran into the desk chair in the hallway and bent over very stiffly to tell me he was home. Then he headed straight for the television to check "the scores." By that, he means baseball because he is a St. Louis Cardinals fan and they are in a tight race to get in .... something that could lead to the World Series.
When he came to bed later, I groggily mumbled, "Is your back hurt?"
"Shoulder," he responded. All that canoeing from lake to lake in Canada aggravated an old football injury that used to pop his shoulder out of place and they'd simply pop it back in and send him into the game again. He has a huge railroad track scar above his collar bone where the cigar-chomping surgeon worked on the shoulder injury.
I'm sure I'll hear many fun camping stories once he is up and I return from work.
Meanwhile, here's a photo that a friend just put on Facebook of me and Earl at a New Year's Eve party. Always fun to find a decent photo.

Have a happy Thursday.

Smorestix

I saw something tonight that makes me wonder about the ingenuity of our citizens.
I was leaving the grocery store when I saw a display that included boxes of graham crackers and bags of marshmallows. It was a temptation to make smores.
Smores are those campfire treats where the camper roasts a marshmallow then smashes the melting marshmallow between two graham crackers with some Hersheys chocolate stuck inside for extra deliciousness.
That's all pretty regular stuff. What got to me were these long sticks leaning against the display that said "Smorestix."
That's right. They were selling "Smorestix."
What is a smorestix you might ask?
It's a stick to roast the marshmallow on. Now, instead of finding a stick in the woods, sharpening the end, applying the marshmallow, and holding it over the flames of a campfire, we are supposed to buy our children clean, manufactured sticks on which to roast their marshmallows.
What's next -- a campfire scented candle so we don't even have to build the fire?
An extra lumpy pad we can roll out on our beds so it feels like we're lying in the bottom of a tent. A ceiling that mimics the night sky so we don't even have to leave our bedrooms.
Smorestix -- humph!

Overprotective Mom

That's what my 16-year-old son is calling me. He thinks it's ridiculous that I won't let him go along with five of his buddies for a weekend at a friend's trailer in the Hocking Hills.
Hocking Hills is a beautiful area about an hour and a half from here, where the Appalachian Mountains think about starting. The hills start to roll and they're covered with an expanse of forests. We've gone there many times as a family.
His friend Riley's family owns a trailer somewhere in the Hocking Hills, and these 16-year-olds, who are becoming newly independent, think it would be "epic" to go down there for the weekend. They'd build a campfire and roast hot dogs. They'd cut their own wood with an ax. What could possibly go wrong?
Let's start with the drive down there, I suggest. Who plans to drive you all? He lists two friends who have their license and access to a car. Two 16 year old boys driving a carful of friends onto those curvy, country roads. Disaster right there. Aside from the fact that Ohio has a law that 16-year-olds are only allowed to drive one other person in the car, I would not trust a 16-year-old to drive that far away.
Then there is the group of boys sitting around a campfire with access to knives and axes. Can't you just picture the way they would begin to dare each other to do things?
I can't even come up with the ludicrous kinds of games they would invent after watching weeks of "Deadliest Warrior" -- whether they'd be playing an innocent game of William Tell and shooting apples off each other's heads or trying hatchet throwing games.
Sixteen-year-old boys in a big group don't always make the best decisions. They also aren't good at resisting the suggestions of the rest of the group.
What happens when one of them decides they need to go on a beer run? Has the driver already been drinking when they pile into the car in the dark on those twisty roads?
"Mom, would probably wouldn't even drink beer," Spence said to me. Then realized what he had said.
Do they leave behind the campfire they built and consequently start a forest fire? See, they could do more than just hurt each other.
"No way," I said.
"But you said I could," he lied.
"I said you could go if Riley's dad went and drove," I corrected him.
I can't believe the other boys' parents are okay with this. Some of the boys' parents I don't know very well, so maybe they are letting their sons go. Or maybe this is just boy talk about what they'd like to do and none of the parents are okay with it.
I suppose in two years he'll be going off to college and I won't be able to control who he drives off into the mountains with. But maybe something magical happens in those two years and his decisions become much more measured.
What do you think? Am I being overprotective or should I stick to my decision?

Bailing on the Trail

Maybe we can blame it all on Mapquest. Maybe if Mapquest hadn't sent us on US 129 through the Smoky Mountains things would have turned out differently. Of course, my friend Naj hadn't told us she gets car sick until we began winding up and down the mountains. We met only motorcycles zooming around those hairpin curves and pulled over three times for police cars or ambulances. When we finally sped into the parking lot to meet our shuttle to the trail, Naj jumped out and puked beside the river.
Hmmm. Not a great start. We pulled our packs from Noreen's van and piled them in the trunk of the shuttle. Maybe if we hadn't been in such a hurry, I wouldn't have left my water bottle in the van.
Maybe if the driver, Mark, had not been one of those people who drives with a foot on the brake and another on the gas, accelerating and braking over the mountains, then he wouldn't have vomit on the interior of his Lincoln Town Car. And maybe if we hadn't stopped several times for Naj to throw up, we would have gotten to the Appalachian Trail earlier than 4 p.m.
Maybe if we hadn't started at Winding Stair Gap in North Carolina and planned to hike nearly 4 miles to the campsite, we would have gotten there in time to eat dinner in the light, rather than in the pitch black night. Adjusting packs, stopping for photos, admiring the changing leaves -- those were all part of our plan. But as the light began to fade, we hurried on, worried that our first night would arrive without a campsite.
Maybe if it hadn't started to rain the minute we set up our tents and continued to rain through the night and all the next day. If we hadn't cooked in the dark and hung our bear bag from a tree limb in the dark. If we'd broken down camp faster in the morning and hadn't needed to hike down a side path to filter water.
Maybe if the rain hadn't made the leaves on the path slippery and the misty fog hadn't made the view from Siler Bald disappear.
Mostly though, if our packs hadn't weighed too much and fit poorly and if the trail hadn't been straight up then maybe we would not have left the trail earlier than we planned.
Noreen and Pam hiked ahead with their longer legs while Naj and I lagged behind. The second day was pure misery. The rain fell. A blister swelled on my heel. And a thick fatigue settled on my shoulders. I felt like I couldn't go another mile. So when I pulled myself up to a gravel logging road and found Noreen and Pam there, I was so relieved when Noreen said, "I know what you're thinking because I was thinking the same thing."
Thank, God! She knows we need to leave the trail, I thought.
But then she continued, "I thought after all that climbing the trail would level off."
Behind her, wooden stairs were built into the mountain to continue the trail toward Wayah Bald.
"Wait! That's not what we were thinking! We were thinking we need to get off the fucking trail!" I said.
I rarely use the F-word, but I thought it was appropriate at this juncture.
The problem was that we needed to hike 27 miles in four days. Something we'd imagined was manageable. We had all run marathons in the past, going nearly 27 miles in less than five hours. How could we fail to go the distance in four days?
But, at 2 p.m., we had to face the fact that a day of constant walking had gotten us only four miles. We were eight miles from the beginning of our hike and we had nineteen miles to go.
"Let's get to Wayah Bald and set up camp for the night."
That would put us at 10 miles from the beginning. We couldn't imagine we could go farther. Too exhausted.
"But we're wet and cold. We can't sit still for 15 hours," Noreen protested.
So we located a road where someone could pick us up. My husband, disappointed in our choice to leave the trail, called around and found us a ride. We hiked two miles in an hour and met the car. We were going home.
When my 12-year-old called out in the middle of the night and I comforted him before climbing into my bed and snuggling against my husband's back, I thought, I'm so glad I'm home in my warm bed and not out on the cold, wet trail, changing positions on the hard ground.
Does that mean I won't go backpacking again? Well, not anytime soon. And not with my boots that are too small or a backpack that doesn't fit right. But I do have a date with the woods later this month when we go ziplining through the Hocking Hills.