At rest

The Argentière glacier at sunrise

We went away, and now we are returning.

In a few minutes. We are not in a hurry. We are never in a hurry to leave the vallée. It has become home for at least one long week a year, but one long week, however long, is not enough. Not if you love winter, snow, mountains, long walks with your dogs in the forest below tree line and skiing the rocky slopes above.

The dogs have been a godsend. No one should travel anywhere without dogs if they wish to meet the locals and anyone staying longer than a week, usually, however long. They are conversation starters when you cross others with theirs, walking in the forest. They attach you to a place in a way just walking alone does not, and sometimes, they become part of a place, like Baccarat.

We brought her back, like we promised ourselves we would do. For months, her ashes remained in a plastic bag, sealed with a twist-tie, inside a hideous, cheap, but certainly well-intentioned Delft china style urn provided by the crematorium (a word I do not like) in a pristinely white cardboard box, a white envelope containing a certificate attesting to the ashes really being those of our dog, Baccarat, taped with equally pure white tape to it, all inside a plastic bag from our vet's office. I put it up on a storage mezzanine in the petite maison to wait until our time to leave again for Argentière, and every time I'd go in to make up a bed for a guest or iron in the Summer room, I'd look up to the bag, sitting above my head next to an over-sized and unused lampshade and say, "Hello, Bacs."

It made me very uncomfortable. She needed to get to her place. But, time eventually passed and the day came to pack the car and drive off to Chamonix. I went for the plastic bag, containing the urn, holding her ashes in the plastic bag sealed with a twist-tie, and carried it to the car to join the bags, the skis, and Rapide and Fia for the trip back to the valley. And then, the bag and its contents sat on the daybed in our hotel room on the pile of luggage, waiting.

"Where will we leave her?" I asked Sam. "In the forest, or shall we take her up to the top of the mountain, over the glacier?"

"I don't know. Maybe both," he said, "But let's take some home." I considered that for a moment.

"You mean divide her in three? You think that's alright?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess so."

And so, a day, and then two, and finally a third went by, and the box sat still on the daybed with the bags. Then, I got up on the fourth day and heard a voice.

When are you going to finally get around to doing this? asked myself. The prodding self that makes me get things done, including the most unpleasant and difficult things.

"I'll ask Sam."

I think, said myself, that he is waiting for you to get around to it. How about now?

Now. I set the plastic bag on the table and removed the box, peeled back the white tape, removed the envelope with the certificate, removed the tape from the cheap Delft style urn and opened it. There was still the matter of removing the bag of ashes, which was larger than the mouth of the urn. I got three small Ziplock bags and prepared to pour Baccarat into them in equal parts, without spilling any of her on the floor for housekeeping to sacrilege by vacuuming her unceremoniously up. Dust puffed up. I was breathing. I was breathing in Baccarat. I tried to breathe less.

Sam opened his eyes and watched the procedure from his bed.

"We'll take one bag up with us today, and go all the way up. Don't worry. I'll double-bag it."

I was remembering the incident from the previous day when the bag containing the apricots, figs, almonds, a clementine and half a banana exploded open in his Dakine backpack. I was sure he was envisioning Baccarat clinging to every surface of the inside of his backpack in yet another scenario of sacrilege, and this was not meant to be humorous or catastrophic in any way.

We took the téléphérique up to Grands Montets, just below the Aiguille Verte, Europe's highest ski trail, and began skiing down the black along the glacier, "Point de Vue".

Where will you leave her? asked myself. The opportunities were sailing past us the farther along we skied.

"I'll ask Sam."

"Sam?" He slowed and turned to look back up at me; I am generally somewhere up behind him. I slid in next to where he waited. "Where will we put her?"

He looked around the mountainside, "Maybe where we stopped and had lunch last year."

I nodded. That would do. It was a place that looked out over the glacier, and it was a place where we had stopped to share a meal. We skied on until we arrived at the place and took off our skis, trying not to slide down the side of the mountain into a crevasse. We did not wish to spend the rest of eternity with Baccarat, up on the glacier.

"How will we do this?" I asked, looking around at the various stones poking up out of the hard scrabble dirt and sparse tufts of golden grass, snow blown up into ridges under the little overhangs they provided. He concentrated and chose a stone. We made our way down to it, sliding on our bottoms and using the heels of our ski boots to dig in.

"I can't reach," I said, watching him finish his hole with the point of my ski pole. I had inched down a little too far and inching back up seemed too much like tempting fate.

He reached down, took the bag I held out to him and poured her ashes into their hole, and then he moved his hand in an arc, brushing snow up to cover them, trying to pat down the powdery snow. I joined his effort, brushing the light coating of feather-light snow off the stubbly yellow grass and ice to cover her deeper, and I felt a tear slide down into the foam of my goggles, and then another. We stood and made our way back up to our skis. I looked back.

"Be a good dog, Baccarat," I said, and realized they were my last words to her when I left her in her cage the night before her surgery. Silly words. "Of course you will be. You were the best dog."

I felt better, but there was the place to choose in the forest.

Sam came with me for our evening walk, after it was dark and we would be alone on the trails through the giant firs. We considered a first and then a second place.

"It shouldn't be so close to the main trail," said Sam. We turned down toward the stream.

"This is where Baccarat ran into the freezing water and got all soaked that first night," I said.

We walked along, looking at trees. Sam has become fascinated with trees, taking photographs of them like I do on my morning walks. He stopped by a tall fir, growing out of the hillside on the other side of the trail from the stream bank. We stood silently, Fia and Rapide nosing around our legs. I wondered if they understood our purpose. Rapide, anyway, although it was Fia I suspected of understanding.

"Do you want to do it here?" I asked.

"This is the first place she came into the forest," he said.

The tree divided at its base, sending roots down into the soil, and where it did, it formed two small, perfect chambers. They looked like the rooms of her heart that filled with the tumor that killed her. It looked like the perfect place to nestle part of her. I climbed up the turf, covered in soft fir needles and encased in crusty snow, and Sam turned the torch on his iPhone on for me so I could see to pour her ashes into the smaller chamber, like the place where the tumor grew, and covered them with tiny fir needles and some chunks of snow and then a rock.

We walked on home, to the hotel, and a day or two later, I took the white box and the Delft china style urn to the garbage and recycling bins and tossed the urn in one and the box in the other. That was the moment I felt the freest and the lightest since the phone rang while we waited during her surgery. We had done what we had set out to do, and Baccarat's circle was complete.

The third bag is for home in Mousseaux. Perhaps I will ask the mason to build a little chamber under the stone at the top of the steps which she made her outlook, surveying the lower garden, the field and the Seine and the world beyond. In that chamber, I can put a little box containing the other third of her in her garden.

....

Run, Sisyphe, run

Running feet

I'll be keeping these shoes for awhile now that I know that all those gel pads and special features aren't worth the fortune the running shoe companies ask you to fork over to protect your feet and make them (the shoe companies, not your feet) fabulously wealthy, while you suffer aches and pains thanks to them.

What happened? My friend David showed up in January with a pair of Vibram fivefingers shoes and told me to get myself a copy of Running World writer Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Since he adopted the "barefoot" running technique, he could run distances he'd never been able to before. Curious, I went straight to Amazon.co.uk and ordered a copy.

So, what's it all about? Here's Washington Post's Dan Zak's review of Born to Run.

In his first book, journalist and former war correspondent Christopher McDougall suggests -- or proves, depending on your degree of skepticism -- that running extremely long distances barefoot is the key to health, happiness and longevity. Brand-name footwear, with its gel-based cushioning and elaborate architecture of super-advanced support, is a common cause of athletic injury, he argues. And running steadily for hours at a time is not only therapeutic but also natural. Primitive humans did it constantly, catching and killing quarry simply by exhausting them in a marathon hunt. Reading all this is enough to make a modern American feel fat, stupid and lazy, especially given the hyper-toned, swift-footed focus of "Born to Run," an operatic ode to the joys of running.

McDougall's subject is the Tarahumara, a tribe living frugally in the remote, foreboding Copper Canyons in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The Tarahumara are legendary for their ability to run extreme distances in inhospitable conditions without breaking a sweat or getting injured. They are superathletes whose diet (pinole, chia seeds, grain alcohol) and racing method (upright posture, flicking heels, clear-headedness) would place them among elite runners of the developed world even though their society and technology are 500 years behind it. It's a fascinating subject, and the pages of "Born to Run" are packed with examples of McDougall's fascination. Running is his religion (he's a contributing editor at Men's Health magazine and has written for Runner's World), and he approaches the sport with the reverence and awe of a disciple encountering the face of his god. In this case, the god is the Tarahumara.

The book flows not like a race but like a scramble through an obstacle course. McDougall wends his way through the history and physiology of running, occasionally digressing into mini-profiles of top-tier racers and doctors, spinning off into tangents about legendary races like the Leadville Trail 100 Ultramarathon, while always looping back to the main narrative. Back on course, he describes his pursuit of the bashful, elusive Tarahumara and their secret to success on foot; his befriending of an eccentric gringo who became part of the tribe and is the key to McDougall's communication with it; and the realization of the eccentric's dream to pit big-name, corporate-sponsored American marathoners against the near-primeval Indians in a super ultra-marathon in the Copper Canyons. A race to end all races, in other words. A sprint to the finish between old and new.

The scenario is a writer's dream. McDougall found a large cast of crazy characters, an exotic setting for drama and discovery, and a tailor-made showdown with which to cap the book. By and large it's a thrilling read, even for someone who couldn't care less about proper stride and split times and energy gels. McDougall's prose, while at times straining to be gonzo and overly clever, is engaging and buddy-buddy, as if he's an enthusiastic friend tripping over himself to tell a great story. He writes, for example, of a fellow-runner who "sluiced sweat off his dripping chest and flung it past me, the shower of droplets sparkling in the blazing Mexican sun."

A relentless and experienced reporter, McDougall dramatizes situations he did not directly witness, and he does so with an intimacy and an exactness that may irk discerning readers and journalistic purists. "Born to Run" uses every trick of creative nonfiction, a genre in which literary license is an indispensable part of truth-telling. McDougall has arranged and adrenalized his story for maximum narrative impact. Questions crop up about the timing of events and the science behind the drama, but it's best to keep pace with him and trust that -- separate from the narrative drama -- we're actually seeing a glimpse of running's past and how it may apply to the present and the future. McDougall makes himself a character in the book without distracting from the story. He's our hero, a runner stricken with injuries until he began investigating the Tarahumara, who led him to startling revelations about the way we run and the way they run. McDougall finds that running is a danger if done incorrectly and a salvation if done properly. The stories he tells of the Tarahumara and of the world's greatest mainstream runners all herald a return to the basics: running barefoot or with the cheapest, flattest sole possible; and running not for money or celebrity or victory but for camaraderie and the sheer joy of using our bodies for a basic, essential purpose.

Born to Run" is an examination of sport, an allegory of cross-cultural understanding and a catalogue of philosophies of living. At this point in history, life is not necessarily about the survival of the fittest, or even survival of the fastest. We're past survival now; there's no need to run down prey or outrun a predator. But that's no reason, McDougall says, to stay rooted to the couch.

Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

I'd say that's pretty accurate, and completely taken with the book's story, I read parts aloud to Sam in our hotel room, while we recovered from our days skiing down the bowls of Grands Montets. Home last evening, I decided to see if my friend's experience wasn't a fluke and if the method McDougall describes can work for this old distance-fearing half-hearted, wishful, wanna be runner, so I put on my old Asics and set out the door into the night. Closing the gate behind me, I set my heart rate monitor, gave myself a few words of encouragement and started up the street.

Stay on your toes, myself said to me. Like you're running uphill, right?

"What if my feet or calves start to cramp?"

Just do it. Myself can be pretty funny. That's Nike's, the nemesis of barefoot running and marketer of evil-doing super-cushioned running shoes, motto. I shrugged. I can't wear their shoes, but I've always liked their slogan. I took a few first springy steps on my toes, and to keep myself on them, I chose the left at the fork at the end of the street, following Grand Rue up to the top of the ridge rather than the rue de la Charrière à Vie down to the Chemin de Vétheuil (my usual route). The old blond lab was at his post behind the fence of the house halfway up on the left, barking like a madman at me as I bounced "easily and lightly" past him. I'll get to "smooth and fast" later, I said to him, after telling him to shut up. Nicely.

That's the rotten part about running around here, other than the wild boars (which I'll get to later): one dog starts barking and sets off the entire countryside round abouts, just like in 101 Dalmations. Like it's important news that a lone woman is trotting past their fences and on the way to those farther on.

"Ca suffit," I growl at them on the way past. "Tais-toi!" That's enough. Be quiet.

At the top, and not yet in pain, I turned onto the "Transamazonienne", the "new" road that cuts a path from the N13 from Rosny sur Seine to Bonnières sur Seine to the Base de Loisirs, just before Lavacourt, the village from which Monet painted the church of Vétheuil across the Seine. The construction of the new road was intended to deflect traffic from our small village up onto the ridge, which had the sad consequence of draining the pizza restaurant and café just before our house of customers, and closing its doors. The owner still lives in an apartment next to it, while a couple has come to give the spot a second go as a bar and restaurant. Seems to be working well enough for them to stay in business. We have apologized for never coming there for a meal. I did once go over and have a grand café one morning, when I had no more coffee at home.

Trotting on down the gentle slope, as the ridge seeks the riverbank in Lavacourt, I checked my form: abs strong, back tall, legs under my hips, kick back from my toes, the balls of my feet taking my weight, letting the 26 bones and all those tendons in my arches do their job. I imagined my feet flexing and absorbing my weight, reduced by the work I asked my abs to do, running "from the gut". It was easy. Easier than I had ever known running to be. No one could accuse me of going fast here, but both my feet were off the ground with each stride. I was running.

At the next light pole, I checked my heart rate monitor watch. Not even 145 BPM. I was going to keep it low, take it easy. Stay in the fat-burning range and see how far I could go, and somewhere just before Lavacourt, a wild thought came to me: I'd run all the way through Moisson, up to Freneuse, across the field to the road up to Méricourt and down to Mousseaux. I'd heard the boucle was 18 km around. I felt inspired. I was certain (enough) that I could do it

I'd do it.

Heading out of Lavacourt, I checked my heart rate again: 142 BPM. All I had to do was ask, and it dropped to 139. I altered my stride, lifting my knees, kicking my legs back a little more and ran easily into Moisson.

Are you going to do it? Myself asked me. Do you think you can go all the way around the boucle?

"Yeah, I think I am. I think I can."

Hunh. What if --

"I get tired?" I asked myself.

Yeah. I hate to bring it up, but --

"I can walk."

Or so I thought. Trying once, later, my legs wouldn't let me. The little stride on my toes had become automatic. My legs kept going. I had no choice but to tell my head to get back to work.

It was after the cemetery at the far edge of Moisson that I heard the first wild animals, off in the trees at the sides of the road. There are deer and wild boars. There are foxes and probably rabbits, although I have never seen a rabbit here, personally, although I see tons of them over near Rosny. My keys jingled in my pocket. I held them through the cloth of my jacket to make them be quiet. Animals do not carry keys, and I wanted to pass for one of them. The jingle sounded too much like tags on a dog collar, and dogs mean one thing: the hunt. Later, I took them out and stuck my finger through the ring and let them nestle in my palm so as not to grasp them and lose any precious energy. I could see the lights of La Roche-Guyon marching up the steep ridge across the Seine through the trees to my right. Then, its church began to toll the hour.

Two, three, four, myself counted. I picked up.

"Five, six, seven, eight. Eight O'clock." The bell struck again. Nine.

Nine? Nine O'Clock? Merde!, said myself. How can that be? You left just before seven, and you've run a little more than an hour.

I must have left an hour later than I thought I had. My husband would be home from work before I got back, and he'd have no idea where I was. He'd find the car keys on the ledge, the car out on the street. My bag on the stairs. The dogs crashed in front of the wood stove with the cats.

Elle n'est pas sortie ni partie promener les chiennes, he'd say to himself. Alors, où est elle? He'd never think to check to see if my running shoes were on the floor by my side of the bed.

Looks like your 18 km is over, myself said, unnecessarily.

"I know. I could cut across the boucle, you know, by the forest trail." I replied. I didn't really want to. There are --

But the wild boars --

"I know." Jinx. But, which was worse: get a lecture for worrying him by being gone without leaving any note and having forgotten my cellphone, or get a lecture for risking my life -- should my life be preserved by these huge, tusked beasts -- by returning directly home across the forest? Not that wild boars never crash across the roads around here. Ask the drivers who have had to have their cars repaired, or junk them.

Just don't tell him what you did.

"Alright," I agreed, not sure I wouldn't tell the truth, and scared as hell to head onto that 4 km long path through the home of the boars. I bounced on, as lightly as I could on my toes with the growing fatigue in the insertion point of the quads, my abductors asking me if we couldn't just hitch a ride home from the next car to pass, watching for the the lane leading to La Vacherie. The Vacherie is famous for having been Rommel's home away from home across the Seine from La Roche-Guyon, where he set up the German headquarters during the occupation. The trail through the forest starts there. The road rose gently, the sign for the sudden curves appeared, and then the lane to the right. I turned took a deep breath and steeled myself in my decision before turning left and heading into the forest, the groomed dirt road would turn rough just past the two imposing Victorian houses.

But what if you make a misstep and hurt yourself? What will you do then? Myself started in again, beginning to sound like my worry-wort husband. All this worrying wasn't helping.

"I'll be careful. My eyes will adjust. At least the stars are out and make a little light to see by. I'll take it easy, until I see the first wild boar, anyway." A weak attempt at humor. It was certain that I would. They are everywhere. In the fall, the local hunters organize weekend hunts to kill an established number of the sangliers, who would otherwise continue to reproduce, stampede across the roads, ravishing cars, right along with fields and gardens in the area.

There weren't wild boars wild here before the storm of 1999, but there was a boar farm that raised sangliers for slaughter for sausages and stews. The winds howled during the night of that great storm, and when the farmer went out to check the fences the next day, he found them blown down, and not a boar in sight. He packed up and left, but the boars stayed and became wild. Hence, the fall hunts to thin their numbers.

I left the houses in my back and felt the path deteriorate under my feet. Small animals roused into motion as I passed, scuttling off away from this creature, holding her keys to keep them from jingling and forbidding herself to speak aloud, even to encourage herself.

Don't let them think you aren't one of them. They will know you aren't if you talk, myself told me.

"Don't you think they can smell that?" I replied, barely suppressing a snideness in my voice that really wasn't very nice.

Well, it gives you a chance, if the wind is blowing away from them.

"True."

I ran on.

It seemed forever. The trees went on and on at either side. I knew how long it felt from having driven it slowly in the car with a visitor last fall, the day of a wild boar hunt, in fact. I wanted to show her the grand Victorian houses and get back home quickly. The lane, I learned that day, is murder for the suspension of a car, let alone for me in the dark; no one gets anywhere quickly on it. The hunters had stared at me like I had lost my mind. This night, brambles grabbed my running leggings, trees felled in the recent storm tripped me, the pads of my feet sometimes landed on smooth pine needles, other times slipped on a stone or in a rut. I listened for the unmistakable sounds of the wild boars.

Then, I heard them. I saw their dark forms first. There, just to my right. My heart stopped, but my feet kept moving. I thought I saw a single, glaring eye send me a warning.

Stop or keep going? Quick.

"Keep going, don't talk, no jingle -- get away."

Right. Right. We heard a loud and aggravated snort from just next to me along the path.

"Oh God."

Keep going, myself ordered me. We listened to see if it had changed directions to follow us. Memories of my husband's story about crossing a mother wild boar in the forest while out walking with his kids when they were little flew through my mind.

What did he say? Do they charge? Is it best to move or to stay still, actually. Should you stop? Hunh? Myself was starting to sound panicked. That was not helpful. I didn't need to have to get a panicked self out of there, I was already worried enough for two.

"Sh! Will you? Please? I think it's okay. I think it went on into the forest. I don't think it, or it's friends and family, wants to meet us any more than we want to meet it."

But, what if it is hungry. Do they eat us?

"No, they don't eat us. They just try to protect their young ones, but it's got to be too early for there to be babies around."

It had grown quiet around us again, and I ran on, toward the lighter sky showing in a slit from between the trees on either side of the path some unmeasurable distance ahead of us. The path kept rising, back up from the banks near Moisson to where the boucle rises to a crest above our street in Mousseaux, and then my foot came down farther than it had before. The path was heading downward. My legs were begging me to stop, but the faster I got out of there, the better. I kept the fastest past I dared to go, and could go, and still the path went on.

And on.

I was looking for the little farm and the hunting lodge, recently painted in precisely the colors of our renovated house. Of course I got there -- I wasn't running in place --, and the relief was enormous. I wasn't going to be gored by a wild boar in the silence of a late winter night, and some small distance farther along, I'd cross the Transamazonienne and continue on the paved portion of the same route, past the new elementary school, past the small community center, past the cemetery, down a steep street to our road, and, finally, to our house. The church bells were quiet when I passed, some minutes later, and it wasn't yet 10 pm when I finally stopped my heart rate monitor, saw it flash 142 BPM average and tell me I'd been at it for 1 and hour 52 minutes.

Not exactly a frantic pace, commented myself.

"That wasn't my point," I reminded myself, pushing open the gate and approaching the warm, cozy light showing through the French doors around the corner. My husband was having a whiskey, standing in his spot in front of the TV. The fire in the wood stove had turned to embers. I tried the handle. Locked. I tapped softly on the pane of glass. He turned and smiled at me, shook his finger "no", teasing me. I nodded "yes". The door opened.

"Où étais-tu?" he asked.

I told him the truth, and went to measure my distance in the car, slipping ColdPlay into the CD player to keep me company.

What if a wild boar charges the car in the forest? Myself started in again.

"It won't. I'll drive slowly. They only run into cars, you know, when cars are going too fast to avoid them. They're pretty stupid."

Oh. Alright then. We drove off the way I had set out, two hours before. It was 15.1 km, with 4 of them being the trail through the forest. I have never run that far before.

It worked, the "barefoot running" method carried me farther than I had ever run before, and I could walk this morning, ride a stationary bike at the gym for an hour, stretch and still move. My personal trainer is a Doubting Thomas, telling me to wait until I injured something or another. He likes to think he knows it all.

I let him.
....

The reason we come here, and au revoir

Baccarat discovers skiing

She still doesn't know that's why we come -- essentially -- to this place she'd probably prefer to Moosesucks.

You and me, Bac. You and me.

She was so surprised by the humans gliding down the packed trails, heading over to the lifts up to Grands Montets that I decided to walk on over to the chairlift and Gondola up to the slopes with them, just to see what sort of reaction that would draw. I was not disappointed! Rapide couldn't take her eyes off the chairlifts moving this way and that overhead, skis dangling into the air. Baccarat darted back and forth, from me to under the chairs, and back again.



And as if the morning hadn't been packed enough with excitement and pleasures, they found a new friend with whom to play; the dog of a lovely woman with a Nordic or German lilting accent in her French, setting out from Grands Montets on her cross country skis. I regretted my American one. A poor exchange. It was a little like a French for beginners conversation.

"Ils sont gentils?"

"Oui, ells sont très, très gentilles."

"Le mien aussi, il est très gentil."

"Elles adorent jouer avec un autre chien."



"Oui!" dit-elle, "Ils aiment jouer ensemble!" I could hear her smile in her voice, even though I was too far to see her correctly, and I was busy watching the dogs race around my legs.

"Il y a des gens qui n'apprécient pas qu'on laisse jouer nos chiens avec les leurs, mais ici, ce n'est pas le cas. Tout le monde comprend que les chiens en ont besoin."

"Oui!"

"Allez, Rapide. Allez, Baccarat. On laisse la dame faire son promenade de ski! Viens! Au pied!" I wanted to take this nice woman home with me and keep her forever. Her dog, too.

It was our last day, and if I knew Sam (and I do know Sam), he was still sleeping. The sun in the sky, light clouds moving through the valley, he'd regret having missed time skiing, but never enough to get up. By evening, he was snoring on his bed, fully dressed still in his ski clothes, when I decided to come down to the lounge and met the pilot and the photographer. A boy needs his 12 hours, especially after a day furious that he can't throw a 360° at will and get air every time. It's not easy, I try to console him, when you live in the muddy French countryside, just this side of Normandy.

For those who have never been here, or to a place like this, I include the next two bits of video that I took yesterday, riding the chairlift Rapide and Baccarat saw earlier in the morning. When I first came to Chamonix with Sam, 10 years ago, I was immensely disappointed when we arrived in the valley around noon because there was practically no snow visible and I couldn't see a single trail or skier. I had come to one of the top ski resorts in the world, a sort of fairy tale trip for a single mom and her little boy, and all I saw was dirty snow in the streets of a fairly good sized city, settled between tree-covered slopes. I settled us in for a nap for our jetlag, hoping to awake to a new sight.

Inquiring later, we were told that the skiing is accessible via gondola at the higher altitudes. All I could see were rock peaks covered in snow. Up there?

Oui.

Oh.

The next morning, we got our equipment, bought our week ski passes and headed to the gondola -- téléphériques -- up to the nearest of the 5 stations just above us, le Brévent. The gondola rose up through the trees, higher and higher along the lower slope of the mountain, and then, suddenly, it cleared the trees, and we were surrounded by brilliant white snow and skiers, everywhere. We stepped off into the most stunning winter landscape I had ever encountered. It took my breath away to leave the city below and find myself in a skier's paradise, completely removed from everything that has nothing to do with the purest air and skiing.

We have returned every year since then, save one.

From the valley base, the lower portion

Arriving at the top

From here, you have to ski down to another chairlift, down a slope to where the gondola arrives -- for those who prefer not to take the series of chairs, but we don't like to wait for the gondola -- and then you can take one of the chairs or the "eggs" -- les oeufs -- up to the top of Bochard or another spot from which another red and two blacks take off. There is a second gondola, which we didn't take this year, that does to the very top, and from there, you can ski down the glacier of Argentière. For this, you need a costlier pass, or to pay 10 euros per person per trip. We did this last year, and it would be well worth it for me to track down those photos, probably taken with Sam's camera. Stunning.

And a 360° panoramic of the view from the top of Bochard,



And, since there was a specific request to see Sam, and not just the dogs, here you go. I did my best. The subject was less than enthusiastic.



Time to finish loading the car, pay the hotel bill, and leave the valley. I could stay here at least until the snow melts, the rhododendrons bloom, and the summer hiking begins, and then stay on again.

When I return, I will find the balcony mostly finished on our house. That's another story. They did come on Monday, a week late, just as Audouin was threatening to have our lawyer take action. Joaquim bent his ear for two hours on the telephone, explaining all over again -- all he needs is reason to be excited and an audience of one -- how Eric had made a mess of everyone and abused us all.

There is certainly a true story in all that is said by the various parties, but I am so, so sick of it. All I wanted was my delapidated house renovated so that I could live in it more happily, and I have to live a Portuguese soap opera.

What is certain is that in the end, we will get less for more.
....

Rest

A grave marker

the cemetery in Argentière,
looking up to the glacier

The mountains offer another form of peace, the rest of eternity. While I walk through the forest at their feet and feel the urge to lie down on that cold earth that beckons kindly, watched over and protected by the eternal peeks and soaring trees, promising to cradle me gently under the night sky, others climb the rock faces and the glaciers and find their rest and safety below the cold ground and snow.

I have walked through this cemetery when there was scant snow cover and seen the granite slabs lying side to side, headstones telling the stories of the lives lost scaling the rock and ice of the mountains that surround us, a death that is part of the life of these valleys. They are men, mostly young, although not all. Some have lived to risk their lives more times for the satisfaction of establishing their place in the harshest, least hospitable parts of this landscape, their home.

It is irresistible for some who live in this element. Even the skiers.

Some among us outgrow skis and poles and the blue, red and black trails, staked out nicely by the poles along their sides, with names and signs marking one's progress down them in case of an unfortunate tumble, fill backpacks with shovels and picks, carabiner clips, step into their harnesses, sling rope from their hips, attach their skis to their packs and climb to the tops of the needles to ski back down the untouched snow of the highest corridors, leaving graceful, sinuous trails to mark their passage.

Others ride to the top of the trails to which we will remain faithful, attach their rope and drop down the corridor to unthinkable perches from which to detach and chose their path to the bottom. This is one such point of depart, at the top of Bochard at Grands Montets. Sam and I watched someone do this, fixing their ropes to drop down the V of rock with his friend and their snowboards to ski places we have never seen in 10 years here, Mont Blanc witnessing serenely another human need to conquer this ultimate challenge from across the glacier below.

Most succeed and tell their tales at the bars come the evening. Like the two guys from England here in the hotel lounge where I am writing.

"He's spent 5 days trying to kill us, I think," said one into his iPhone before the other came down to get on his Mac, "It was quite scary, really, especially given my level of fitness right now." They have spent 5 days hors piste, or off-trail, sking the powder of the Mont-Blanc massif. It turned out that the second man was the informal guide for his group of friends. The first was only too happy to recount his perilous outings of the past several days.

"I was the only one without a Recco. I felt quite paranoid, really."

"Yes, you'd have been the only one not to return from your day on the powder."

"Buried under the avalanche," he nodded.

"But, you're here, safe and sound to tell us your tales," I said before turning to his friend, installed with immense calm and confidence in his chair at the corner table, to ask, "You must know the terrain well," I said, "How is that?"

"Oh, he's been coming here for 20 years, skis 50 days a year," said his friend.

"120 this year," rejoined the friend. He looked over at me, "I'm retired now."

"Yeah," said his friend, "100,000 £ cars, 6 months skiing a year. The life, really."

"In what line of work were you in that you could ski 50 days a year, might I ask? I am needing to counsel my son for his education and career, and he might appreciate the lesson." We laughed.

"I photographed cars for trade magazines for 25 years." If only Sam had been there to hear that. Not only did he have a Mac, he's a photographer who makes enough to retire and ski 6 months in the likes of Chamonix.

"My son should be here to hear that," I said. "He spent a ride up the oeufs telling me that my Dell is crap and that a Mac is the only thing to have because he also wants a much better camera. He's thinking international law or photography."

"More lucrative, law, I'd say," said the photographer, with a chuckle.

"Depends on what you love to do, though, doesn't it?"

"I didn't enjoy school, but I have enjoyed work for every day for 25 years," he nodded.

"My son hates school. He's bright, but he can't stand it. I sometimes wonder how he will survive university, if they let him in. He might enjoy being a lawyer, but he might be better off doing what it sounds like he could love." We nodded together. I wished I could get Sam to come down and talk with him. I did go and try to get him, and I was right. He wouldn't come down. The covers up to his chin and Barcelona v Lyon on the little Philips had won out over "buy one, get one free" chicken wings and Manchester United v Inter Milan on the giant screen across the street at The Office.

His friend, who discovered what it is to fear losing one's life, or being seriously frightened and possibly quite mangled at high altitude is a professional commercial pilot.

Go figure.

Others, one day, there are no tales of adventure and danger exchanged by the fire in the comfortable chairs. They accept, rather, their place of rest in the cemetery of Argentière, where they know they might well come to rest.
....