An experiment in semi-controlled sliding

The past two Sundays have been the same: croissants for breakfast, two hour hike in the forest, lunch, long nap, hanging out and watching TV, dinner, sleep/Skype. Of all the things I will miss about France, high on the list is the mountains, the cheese and the wine. I have my fingers crossed that Warsaw has good supermarkets so I can find delicious cheeses, otherwise I'm going to have to start importing cheese or find myself a cheese dealer. 

The hiking, though, the hiking! France has thoroughly surpassed all my expectations in terms of hiking and walking trails. The countryside is criss-crossed with trails that wind through forests, up mountains, around villages and over rivers. With my host dad, there hasn't been nearly as much following of trails, though. Apparently, he's been walking in the forests that surround my house for the past 15 years, so he knows them well enough to periodically wander off the trail. It's possible, of course, that there are trails I just can't see.



Our hiking partner is thrilled to be wandering the forests.

Usually on my hikes I see quite a few people, both in the villages I pass through and just randomly throughout the trails. For some reason, though, the forest across the street from my house was completely empty both times we went hiking. It may be that there are so many trails that it's difficult to run into someone, but I chose to just assume that it was my personal forest. 


The light was particularly magical this morning, and yet again I found myself wishing I had a better camera so I could actually capture what I see.



This little hut was apparently used by the lumberjacks to eat lunch while they were working in the forest. I plan on quitting my job, sprucing it up a bit and moving in.

The uphill hikes were intense, because rather than switchbacks we just left the trail and hiked straight up towards the top of the hill. I don't know if the French don't believe in switchbacks, but most of the trails around here have been like that. It's bizarre, because switchbacks take longer, but they're much nicer on the calves. The view at the top, however, was definitely worth the hike.


This is the view from the Northern side. It's difficult to tell, but the little bump above the pine tree furthest to the right is actually Roquefixade, the castle where I went hiking my first weekend in France.



On the Southern side, the Pyrenees. It's always difficult to get photos of snow-capped peaks when it's cloudy, because the mountains seem to connect with the clouds as if there is no separation between mountain and sky.

My favorite part of the two hikes from the past two weekends, though, was last weekend when we were hiking back. There has been a lot of snow and rain the past couple weeks, so the entire forest was saturated. Often there were streams along the trails and because not all of the trees were evergreen, everything was covered with a layer of leaves. At this point, it was time to test the traction of my new hiking shoes. There were more times than I could count when instead of walking, I felt like I was snow-boarding on leaves. The mud and leaves combined made footing slippery, so while our feet were skidding beneath us it was all we could do to hold our walking sticks out to balance and not fall on our asses.

The most unpredictable were the trails where there was water flowing under and around the leaves. My host dad was walking (read: surfing on leaves) in front of me, and seeing him sliding downhill unexpectedly of course set me off laughing, so half of the reason that I was sliding was because I couldn't stop laughing and therefore wasn't completely in control of my movements. As I mentioned earlier, the French apparently don't use switchbacks, so some of the downhill sections were steeper than I would like. Suffice to say that the descent was much quicker than the ascent.



The sliding was fun, but the obstacles were hazardous at times.

A week from today, I'll be in Poland. I'm both nervous and excited. I've been looking forward to this for months, now, and the waiting has made it worse. I'm happy I decided to travel for a couple months before arriving, because I think if I had waited in Texas for that time, I would have gone slowly but surely crazy. Anyway, I doubt I'll write anything more until I get settled in Poland (unless I see something ridiculously cool in Istanbul, where I'll be staying a night before I get to Warsaw). Au revoir, France!

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