L' Oeuf Magnifique

 Today we drove up the mountain north of St. Julien to do LAND ART with the artist Christophe Eppe. Homer couldn't come with us.


 He would have been in the way.

Two of our sculptures began as spheres and then collapsed. It was a little discouraging.

This is Christophe checking out our ultimately successful rock egg.









And this is Jaclyn and Christophe and me after all of us completed the egg. (I will add more photos soon--had trouble uploading them just now).

Homer Ain't Slow

Trail Running in Labastide Esparbairenque!

I really didn't ever imagine that I would come to France and get a lot of practice running mountain trails. It turns out that this is the perfect area for high mountain, un-peopled, untrampled, awesome, endless trails.

The air is dry and clear, and the trails with southern exposure are very warm in September. Homer, the English water spaniel (I think), likes to come with me.

 Homer is like the wind. He runs twice as far as I do--always circling around and up into the woods, in front of me and behind me.

The views are astounding--big gorges and valleys extending through forests as far as you can see.

Homer reminds me how light a body can be!

Espar?

La Muse in Labastide Esparbairenque

Even the flight attendant on my Air France flight who was from the Languedoc had trouble pronouncing the name of the town which was my destination..But after missing my first flight to Toulouse, then barely making my train to Carcassonne, I was picked up at the train station by John Fanning, the director of La Muse.La Muse is a Writer's and Artist's Retreat in the Aude "department" in the Languedoc region of Southern France.

I was so pleased to be given a residency here. The above is the hallway to my room.

This is the street side of La Muse.

This is the back, which faces the valley. When the weather is warm, the patio is a great place for dinner.

The town is in the middle of the "Black Mountain" region. Basically in the middle of a huge chestnut and pine forest---no one ever knows what part of France I am talking about when I try to describe it.

on the map!