Snowed in or Living it Up

 

 

 

 

Waking up the next morning was a delight. Completely forgotten was last night uncomfortable feeling of being snowed in. We truly were lost in wonder. A largely unusual, dazzling and rather exotic landscape was stretching out before our bewitched eyes.

S.P.’s phone rang. It was V., his childhood friend, who had settled down in Brittany a couple of years before. V. is a very experienced snowboarder whose only regret after moving definitely to Brittany is being so far away from the Alps.

“We all are very busy”, he said. “But this is something so unusual that I vote for a snowboarding session at Les Tertres. I brought my snowboard over when I moved from Paris."

Where then? Well, in the meadow that slopes down along the garden and ends on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the beach.

Why not?

In brief, we’d have only one snowboard handy but we could convert one of our many wakeboards into a sled… This is called being resourceful. Now the only problem we had was finding the right and very warm clothes to have fun in the deep snow for a few hours!  

It was sunny and yet much colder than the night before. We have no mountain/snow gear in Brittany for a very good reason. We had to be inventive, adding up layers of sweaters, slipping on waterproof boating pants over our regular pants and for lack of anything better, we put on very old pairs of snowboarding socks (meant to end as polishing stuff for ages). The brilliant finishing touches were rubber boots for some of us…

V. arrived without further delay, on foot and carrying his snowboard. He doesn’t live very far away but the narrow road was blocked by snowdrifts. Snowdrifts 800 meters from the beach!

He insisted on wearing a mask since he is a very active sea rescuer and does a lot of training in teams even in wintertime. Remember, those were harsh Covid times.
 

Our first move was to pack down the powder snow and make a couple of ski runs of sorts. Snowboarding is a very serious undertaking. No ski-lifts though, which is something that our V. remarked upon when tasked with the chore of preparing the grounds. There were several tries. And then we all had a field day that lasted for a few hours!

 

 

 

We weren't snowed in for too long. Within three days, roads were cleared, naturally of course. The coastal part of Brittany is not really well-equipped with snowploughs, etc. Which is not hard to understand  with one snowstorm every fifty years or more. But with such a drastic climate change though, snowstorms may become more and  more common - routine maybe. 

 

This snowy episode which really took us off guard will be one of our best memories from Les Tertres, especially in Covid times. We were very close to a third national lockdown and we had no idea of what life would be like for months to come. 

 

Carpe diem!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Good Night and Good Luck* 

 

 

 

Didn't it Snow , Children... Didn't it, Didn't it, Didn't it... Didn't it Snow?

 

 

 

“She” sent a message from faraway lands. “I am packing for good. Will I need my snow boots?” He had a good chuckle over it. She had never enjoyed the snowy winters in Boston. Wasn’t she lucky to spend her first European winter in Brittany where it never snows, at least where we are living - by the sea and with the Gulf Stream floating around our coast!

So the answer was no. No need to bring her snow boots. Those would wait until the following winter in London… maybe…

New Year’s Eve surprised us with a flurry of snowflakes which vanished within the next hour… 

Fall and early winter had been exceptionally warm and wet. So wet that torrents of rainwater flowing from the fields had dug deep canyons on the beach below our house, something that was hard to believe and even harder to cross during our daily walks.

 

Then it became sunnier and much colder. "She" was a brave soldier but one could easily see that she was missing the Indian scorching heat.

On the 8th of February, our national weather forecast sent out a heavy snow warning for our coastal area… which it kept repeating every hour. Strange! We usually shrug off most of those warnings. Météo France has lost its credibility ever since 1999 when our meteorologists didn’t even realise that France was going to be hit by a serious hurricane. Plus heavy snow on a coastal area, who could believe it?

On the 9th, it started snowing in the early morning hours. A few snowflakes here and there… By noon, the skies were darkening and we were heading right into a real snowstorm, the kind of which most Britons had probably never seen in Brittany. On the ground, the dusting had turned into a thin blanket of snow. A few hours later, it was metamorphosing into a rather thick comforter everywhere.

We kept shrugging it off. By the end of the day, it was bound to stop and melt at least in our area. We live right above the beach for goodness sake and this is Brittany, not New England!

Guess what? The snowstorm did not abate. Not at all and a strong northern wind started to blow. The sea could hardly be seen but it was rumbling at the bottom of the cliff.

Around 5 pm, we couldn’t resist to brave the snowstorm (even though we were so ill-equipped). The wind was biting and temperatures were falling and heading below freezing point. But out we went. 

 

 

We wanted to take a short walk around the garden, which was very daring! We start swimming quite early in the season and our natural pond is not heated of course but taking a walk during a snowstorm fueled by a nasty northern wind, this was eccentric and maybe raving madness!

 

 

We ended up being very surprised by the thickness of the blanket of snow stepped up by the wind in some areas. The snow was already sticking to the plants which were bending beneath its weight. It was an amazing sight. Beautiful but worrisome. Plants, bushes and trees, they all looked so pitiful... and cold!

 

 

Because we had never done such a crazy thing in such a long time, we started building a snowman. We enjoyed every minute of it of course, feeling so young again… and wondering how many snowmen we had ever built considering the places where we had been spending most winters in our life!

Our snowman was great! Tall and fat. I have to admit it lacked decorations - no carrot-nose, no scarf, no real smile. A victim to a dire lack of time. It was getting dark and honestly, did we, being grown-ups after all,  did we really need a fancy snowman? Plus we were convinced that it would collapse pretty soon over the lawn which was already breaking out wherever we had used the blanket of snow to handcraft the three balls… It might even disappear during the night, not running away of course but melting exactly the way its fellow creatures depart every winter. No exception granted to a snowman from Les Tertres…

And then we went back in. We took off most of our layers. A nice fire was roaring in the fireplace but no chestnuts roasting there. (Not really Breton!)

I remember we settled down on the couch to sip a nice cup of Rooibos. It was completely dark outside and we had no idea nor any desire to open the door nor a window to check if it was still snowing.

“Mañana será otro día”, said Popeye, reminiscing about some very cold winters of his youth in Madrid and acknowledging he never had as much fun in his youth as during this weird snowy episode in Brittany, by the sea.
 

And someone was really feeling sorry she had listened to her husband and left her snow boots at her parents’ place where the temperature was currently 35°C at night!

And this someone got even sorrier when we turned the garden lights on just before going to bed, precisely to check on the thawing process. The joke was on us! Thank you, Météo France! We were snowed in and it was still snowing...

 

 

 

 

*Good Night, and Good Luck*

INTERLUDE - Frozen Frame

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unruffled by our presence, she kept watching for her next meal and then she jumped down and vanished from sight. To this day I am still filled with wonder and very frustrated to live so far away from Kruger Park, South Africa.

 

 

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
(Robert Capa)
 

 

 

 

 

Well, to recap... Whatever Part It Is... Trying to Achieve Closure

 

END OF MAY 2022

I am “home” in Paris, a living environment that is still rather new for me but not for Popeye. Some days it is hard to reappropriate my space because it is so unfamiliar. But it gets better and better every time  I am back from Brittany where I have felt so safe for much too long. Nowadays there isn’t one single cardboard box lying around anymore. Unopened, I mean… My study is looking great with all my books finally on shelves all around me… Thank you, children! And the whole house is very comfy and welcoming… Thank you, all of us!

Now that everything has been sorted, I feel freer to go outside. Stepping out in Paris is still very stressing. Most people don’t wear masks and mingle freely in stores and venues. I have this feeling (fear actually) that my life will never be the same again no matter what. I just feel so distressed and that’s the unadorned truth, I actually feel scared, really scared from time to time. Those two years spent mainly in voluntary confinement in a very safe and isolated place have changed me so deeply that I feel almost unfit to resume life in society.


I know I am still in danger because nobody knows what Covid-19 can do to me with my medical history. I am not sure I would really like to go through another bad experience like my friend C. (who caught Covid during chemo a few weeks ago). People around me have been vaccinated and “boosterized” just like me but they get sick nevertheless, some very badly and others with a couple of very light symptoms, all of them different. So all I hear while trying to come back into real life is : “Be very careful!”. I am careful and I really would like to resume a normal life and then I hear it again and again : “Be very, very, very careful!”

A few months ago, we decided to move forward a little bit. We took a couple of trips. They were very enjoyable but not as enjoyable as they might have been. I saw so many people looking and acting very comfortable while I was shrinking back from time to time…

It didn’t help talking with one of my doctors who has been one of the first cases of Covid-19 in France, in April 2020. The experience scared (scarred?) him so much that he still has problems relaxing and having a normal social life.

I was looking through pictures from 2020 the other day since I’d really like to resume blogging again, probably my way to achieve closure. It really bothers me that my last post ends with “To be continued…” and dates from the end of March 2021.

I was rather hit again by the fact that we did live for so long in complete isolation. I knew this of course but it did not help to look at those three sad people walking on deserted beaches or in the garden… Waiting desperately for the missing one so far away… And very unhappy...

There was a very happy wedding in February but our children ended up living apart for ten long months because of lockdowns and tightly closed borders.

I found again the “picture of our daughter's picture” I had printed on a transparency and glued on the plate glass that’s between our kitchen and the living room so that our girl would be there closer to us than in a frame! But honestly this really didn’t work much to alleviate the pain of separation, especially for her husband even though her steadfast smile was most of the time very helpful through our personal lockdown tensions.

                                                  

And then early December, one phone call… R. had been contacted by the French embassy… She was allowed to fly back to France on the 11th of December… There were so many practical problems to be solved that we decided to really rejoice only when R. would be with us in Brittany for Christmas.

France was again in lockdown since the end of October. SP had to fill forms and prepare several written proofs to be able to drive back to Paris, meet his wife at the airport and drive back with her to Brittany where they were supposed to stay until… until we had no idea when…

R. would also have to quarantine for ten days and take a new Covid test before being allowed to move from Paris.

So yes, there was rejoicing in Brittany but after ten long months and so many uncertainties, we could only hope that things would go well. We also worried about her parents. India was still in a very strict lockdown. R.’s mom had lost her younger brother to Covid a few months before without being able to grieve properly with her family. There would never be a traditional wedding, such an important event for Indian families. Their daughter was flying away to a faraway country to live with a family (including their son-in-law) they barely knew. They knew we loved her very much but remember, those were Covid times filled with so much anguish…

Since no trains were running, SP drove away a couple of days before R. was supposed to fly back to Paris on the first  French flight allowed to repatriate French nationals and Indian spouses… We waited and waited until we heard that R. was on board. The plane did take off almost on time because due to lockdown, there was almost no smog above Delhi.

And yes, R. landed in Roissy. They were wearing masks for their long awaited reunion… and R. started her ten days long quarantine in our new home.

Eleven days later, the young couple drove back to Brittany, right on time for R.’s first Christmas in France with her husband and her in-laws. 

                    

At long last, there were four plates again on the table… A few months later, there would be only two plates left on our table in Brittany but this would be perfectly alright since there would also be two plates on their own table in London! 

 

 

 

*Good Night, and Good Luck*

Well, to recap... Part II

 

 

 

 

Going through so many memories, trying to sort them out one year later is a painful process. I have done this several times in my life  so why is it so distressing now? Is it because one whole year went by and yet we see no end to it all? Is it because I went into such a strict personal reclusion that it ends up feeling like life imprisonment? Or is it just proof that I am terribly scarred by the experience?

April 2020

This is not a joke. I wish it were. One thing that really struck me during the string of lockdowns and restrictions and mainly after the first official lockdown was that I was seriously loosing points of reference. SP was teaching (remote) so it helped a little bit but otherwise I would wake up in the morning wondering which day it was and the day would sometimes end without any reassurance. I am still working on the issue, one year later.

I should have started to write about our (rather boring) daily life but I was feeling so terribly exhausted all the time. Sometimes quite unable to get up from the warm embrace of my favorite armchair. It made sense though since my nights were filled with anxiety and nightmares. And anger too, not knowing what was really going on and who/what was managing our daily life. In retrospect, it really felt somehow easier to fight a recurring cancer and its many side effects. At least I was somehow in charge and fighting. Well, yes, I am going mental.

So April was “Waiting for Godot”… (You probably have heard this expression from Samuel Beckett’s eponymous play which describes people waiting for something to happen, which never happens.) 

Days went by. The end of lockdown kept being postponed. We kept Skyping with Rasima. The weather kept being extremely warm and sunny. Our garden kept getting dazzlingly coloured. Birds kept singing, louder and louder because it was nesting time. Our friends kept sending pictures from a very empty Paris. And we were still kept in.

Our gardeners called us one morning. They had bought the small company from Yves in January and not being able to work was a disaster for them. They were allowed to work outside though but nobody was willing to let them into their garden.

Lucky them! In January, a family of coypus had invaded our pond and our garden. Heartless as we were, they had been (lawfully) trapped and disposed of, because of the very real threat of leptospirosis (which at the time sounded like the most dreadful disease ever). The pond needed to be emptied, cleaned up thoroughly, boulder after boulder, and damages fixed up. Coypus saved a business and it was so nice to wave to human beings whenever we’d catch sight of one of them.

May 2020

The fruit trees were rapidly way past their flowering time and had turned leafy. We felt a flutter of excitement when the first butterfly landed on a "paper plant". Our eldest Wollemi pine went through a sudden reproductive boost, a first for us. Lockdown was not totally negative after all. But its efforts were rather unproductive. It did try though and we were fascinated by the cones, female and male.

Day after day, the sea below was a dream for seafaring men and women like me. Not a single wavelet from morning till dusk. Clear blue skies. Warm weather. I, Olive, declare I could have sailed around the world and loved every minute of it.

Our hair was growing so fast and so long… and so unruly.

Early May, a huge military plane flew right by our house, so low that we worried it’d end up crashing on the beach. The next day, we learnt it was coming back from Brest. They had flown intubated Covid patients from Paris because there was still room for them there and none in the Paris area. Impressive and very frightening.

So we were still waiting for the presidential speech that would somehow free us. We had been told to make masks that would be compulsory at the end of lockdown, following official guidelines. One question? How do you make masks when it is quite impossible to buy elastics or fabric even on Amazon… Ordering on line should not have been a problem. We had become used to ordering food and almost everything online. Delivery was efficient and fast.

I started making masks using whatever I could find in what used to be our holiday home… I became a crack seamstress, recycling T-shirts and summer skirts elastics! We needed to be ready!

And then one day, it did happen… May 11th - we were free but not all of France and our activities were still quite restricted. Some beaches opened up on the 16th but only to go on walks. We were getting less confined but still "at war". Our first walk on our beloved beach was very scary… We would have walked extra miles to avoid getting close to other people.

I mean I would have walked miles to avoid people but I couldn’t. Walking again on a regular basis proved rather hard and painful after missing out so many months of physiotherapy. Thank goodness for crutches… But actually it didn’t take too long before the crutches were simply carried around for safety reasons and my leg got stronger and stronger.

 Very soon we started feeling less threatened on the beach. Strong and coldish winds started to blow at the right time, deterring crowds from invading our beach!

 

And then what?  

...To be continued…

Good Night, and Good Luck

Well, to recap... Part I

 

 

         

                                     © Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, Belgium

 

 The way I see it now, 2020 is at first glance our top “annus horribilis”. Then with hindsight it turns out to be the year we will remember with bewilderment and sideration even (mentally speaking) but also with some kind of fascination. Some of us almost didn’t make it and some of us did not survive. It was a year of discovering our friends and fellow human beings the way they really were. Some very generous. Some extremely egocentric. Some very wise and others so wildly insane. It was like being thrown back to very olden times so well depicted by masters like Pieter Bruegel the Elder or El Bosco… in plague times or war.

The previous year - 2019 - had not been a very easy year. I had spent most of it trying to learn to survive (or not) with a very “exhausted” heart and mending broken bones (without surgery nor cast). But on the positive side, this was also the year when our son got engaged to the most delightful young woman ever with a wedding planned for 2020. Actually two weddings - one in February in France and one in India in April. It had also been the year he chose to leave the US to become a happy and proud academic in a country probably bound to leave Europe pretty soon (but there was still hope then). On our side, we were planning to leave Brussels behind forever and get settled in a house we had fallen in love with and bought in Paris.

So yes 2020 was going to be a very happy and fulfilling year.
 

January 2020

The first day of the year was a very cloudy and cold day in Brittany but I didn’t care because I knew that within four days I’d be in London with my son and I’d spend one great week in museums, the Barbican Centre (“As You Like It”) and one night at the opera (“The Traviata”) with P. who would join us to help me choose my dresses for the Indian wedding.

Once there, I stayed in my beloved hotel in London (after one whole year away for the first time in six years due to my health problems). And once there, they did spoil me, upgrading me to the grandest suite they have, befittingly called the Opera Suite!

Then back to Paris for one day and back to Brittany to welcome our couple in love. They spent a few days at Les Tertres to get all the paperwork done for their French wedding in the lovely city hall of our village, mid-February. And then they went back to London where R. had to attend a workshop and discover her future home.

P. and I went back to Brussels. We had officially denounced our lease and we needed to hire movers, a very easy thing ever after all. The worst part being all we needed to sort after spending 22 years in the same place, amassing so much stuff!

We already knew a weird and possibly deadly virus was going around but we did not feel too worried. We had been through so many bad “bugs” throughout all these years and all of them had been stopped short.

February 2020

We were still in Brussels when on the 4th, we learned that people had been hospitalised with Covid-19 in Belgium, just like in France and Italy. Our Chinese friends in Brussels sounded very worried about it, though, because of a city called Wuhan. Well, Wuhan was in China and a long way away.

We worked hard and we did a lot of worthwhile sorting out and by the 11th of February, we were ready to go back to Brittany. Exhausted but rather satisfied. One or two more weeks in March and we’d be ready to let professionals do their job!

The civil wedding was programmed on the 15th. It would be a very simple thing since it was to be followed by a very traditional 3-days Indian wedding in Delhi.

Attending in Brittany would be the parents (us!) and two witnesses for the groom, and the bride's parents, her brother, sister-in-law and young niece.

We went to pick them up at the Lamballe train station on the 14th. Valentine’s day.

That very day, the first Covid-19 patient died in France.

The bride was arriving directly from Delhi, India, along with her parents. Her brother and family had been flying from Melbourne, Australia. The groom was coming from London and we had been travelling from Brussels to Brittany via Paris. But all this took some time to sink in.

The wedding was perfect, so different from a regular civil wedding in India where you just pop into an office, sign papers and that’s it.

The mayor wearing his impressive official sash officiated at the wedding (we were told it was a great honour). I stood by him to translate the whole ceremony in English. It was quite an experience to stand opposite the bride and groom, witnesses and family members. Watching feelings and emotions on their faces while trying not to get too emotional to deliver a good translation.

 

(The happy lawfully wedded couple holding their "livret de famille" - the official family record book containing registration of the wedding, births and deaths)

They all left the following day, back to their own homes and work places. The bride needed to get her French papers processed in India and we were all to meet again in less than two months for the Indian wedding. The married couple would then fly back to London to start their lawful wedded life!

We stayed a few more days in Brittany. I needed to rest. Happiness can be very exhausting sometimes.

Back in Brussels, we finalized our move. It would last one whole week and would start on the 23rd of March.   

Then back to Paris driving across a very snowy Northern France.
 

March 2020

SP was waiting for us in Paris. He had meetings at the UNESCO but he found time to go buy his suits for the wedding. He was very worried about weird happenings in his department. Colleagues getting very sick with extremely strange symptoms, a few leading to some kind of pneumonia.

Some parts of France and Belgium (and other European countries) were already hit hard by this new plague. ICUs were filling up but what can you tell people when there were no masks and no disinfectant available other than soap? So life was going on in a superb lack of concern. Hard to fear what you don’t really know…

We went back to Belgium to get some more work done to prepare the move. An old woman died in the hospital close to our house. The first Covid-19 death in Belgium. “People die from the flu every winter”, said the government.

We started being more careful, trying to avoid close contact with people. We were rather ready to move and we went back to Paris where on the 10th, our Indian family wished us a “Happy Holi” via WhatsApp. We made our flight reservations and got all the papers ready for our visa.

On the 11th, late at night, we got a phone call from friends who would be attending the Indian wedding celebration. They just couldn’t finalize their visa applications on the Indian government website. They kept getting a message: “Please get in touch with the nearest Indian Embassy”. India had suddenly gone into lockdown.

On the 13th, SP came back from London because he had meetings scheduled in Paris. We went to pick him up at the station. There only were a handful of travellers in the Eurostar.

The following day, British universities closed down. Online teaching would be the trend unless…

I had a cancer and a cardio check-up scheduled at the hospital. It was very creepy. Empty waiting rooms. Doctors wearing masks. No handshakes. Social distancing. They all told me: “Go away. Go to Brittany and stay there. Be very careful. “This” one is a real killer.”

So off we went. The three of us. After packing the car with whatever we thought would be needed for a few weeks. While on our way, we got a phone call from our daughter-in-law. The Indian wedding was postponed sine die. She would stay in lockdown with her parents in their apartment up in the sky close to Delhi, working remote.

On the 17th of March, France entered a lockdown that was supposed to last two weeks, said President Macron. Everything came to a standstill. All stores (except foodstores) and every venue dealing with customers closed. Beaches and parks and forests were out of reach. We were allowed to take a "one hour walk outside" per day - individually or only members of the household - and no further than 2 kms away from home (round trip) after filling a very precise form. And there were forms to be filled every time we’d go get food or medicine, etc. No form and you'd get a fine. In a eco-friendly system, those forms could be filled using an app which most people refused to use anyway since most felt they would be spied upon by the government. But the birth of those conspiracy theories didn’t prevent them to vent their feelings on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the said phones.

 

 

We felt very lucky to be at Les Tertres. It was not very warm but extremely sunny. The orchard was blooming. Due to lockdown, there were no other sounds than the songs of the birds, the wind in the trees and the sound of the waves crashing on the beach down below. Not one single sound of so-called civilization. No planes in the sky. No boats on the sea. No cars on the roads. A perfect time to meditate, to calm down and to start planning our new life.

Planning. Who was even trying to start planning whatever would become our life once lockdown would be over? We were in the harshest lockdown, not knowing much about the new plague and not at all equipped to face it. And even more, not even knowing if or when the lockdown would end. Dreary news from all over the world. 

But we had the will to survive. So we followed the rules very strictly. Our friends sent us pictures of Paris, so eerily empty and silent. We sent them pictures of the empty beach below and of empty skies with no white trails of planes. We also sent them recordings of bird songs and pictures of wild animals (hares and deers) that took to roaming around the house.

 

And we started waiting, our lives brought to a standstill. Hearing about friends getting sick. Hearing about friends just barely surviving and friends dying alone in places that used to be so close but which were now out of reach. Waiting for news. One day at a time. One day at a time.

(You have probably guessed by now that we did not move from Brussels to Paris in March. The flu that was definitely not the flu closed borders and started series of lockdowns that by the way are not over yet... but this is to be continued...)

 

 

 Good Night, and Good Luck

My Travel Book - Shortcuts - Part II

Early June 2017, Swee’Pea flew from Boston to San Francisco to meet us there. We were to spend the next two weeks together in California.

You see, I always had this dream of driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles along the famous Route 1. SP had done it several times while he was living in California. I remember experiencing a disagreeable feeling of jealousy (to call things by their rightful name) while he was showing me his pictures. He wanted to share moments of beauty and happiness with me. But still it was hard on me. At the time, I did feel like I’d never be traveling again and all I was wishing for was to be able to move further and further away from the hospital.

Sometimes dreams come true. We did drive down Route 1, at least down the part that was still open because a few areas had been closed due to landslides. Which meant that we had to alter a few plans, all for the best.

Instead of driving down directly to L.A., we went to Lake Tahoe, another of my dreams. I had spent long evenings watching famous wakeboarders on Lake Tahoe when SP and his friends were trying to master the art of wakeboarding in Brittany. So, yes. Lake Tahoe was a great idea.

By the way, we spent two days there without even seeing one single wakeboarder on the lake. Spring had been very snowy. The lake was way too freezing cold and wakeboarders were still snowboarding on the mountains slopes above Lake Tahoe. 

From Lake Tahoe, we drove down to Yosemite National Park along Highway 88, most of the time that is, because the scenery was breathtaking. So many lakes and so much snow along the road. So many stops and so many pictures.

Highway 88 was splendid. Perfectly dry under the sun. And cars were very scarce.  Oohs and ahs of happpiness. We’d stop every few miles. The ice was breaking up over the lakes (Caples Lake, Silver Lake, Red Lake, I can’t name them all). And there was still tons of snow along the road.

Actually we were getting very close to the gateway to California Gold Fields which is called the Mormon-Carson Pass Emigrant Trail.

I don’t know why but I had the feeling that Swee’Pea was getting fidgety, sort of. He was the main driver and he had been driving for a long time… Oh oh, should we get ready for a shortcut? A road that would break the monotonousness… Some trail maybe…

There was a road on the right that would supposedly spare us at least two or three miles of that boring highway, he said. And off we turned to the right. 

Popeye and I were so shell-shocked that we kept silent. Silent? Speechless is the right term. That’s it. We totally lost the power of speech. I guess that even though SP was probably enjoying himself tremendously, he did not dare utter one single word. You see, there was this set of parents in the car and this road (was it a road?) was awfully narrow and cramped and endless and, and, and… 

Well, the road was not endless after all. In a way it could be, if you felt like walking to Route 88 on a snowy trail. Because the snowplow had obviously given up in the middle of nowhere. There was no network available but it was obvious that we were still quite far away from the exit on Highway 88.

"Shortcut", he said...

I bet you have no idea how they called this road or this whatsoever… “Tragedy Sorings Road” is its name and I am not even kidding. “Springs” because there is a spring somewhere deep below that thick layer of snow and “Tragedy” because three members of the Mormon Bataillon were found killed there in 1848.

We told Swee’Pea that he’d better get us out of there or… Or what? Sometimes one ends up feeling very dumb. So we found a way. The snowplow men had made sure there would be enough room for a car to turn around. There must be quite a few people like Swee'Pea after all! We did not have to push the car because it did not get stuck which did worry us for a while (the getting stuck, of course!). Trust a Kia! It took a few long minutes but the car ended up facing the right way to go back to civilization and to freedom and away from Tragedy Springs!

Swee’Pea was outrageously jubilant! “I knew it’d be fun!” So annoying not to be able to tell him curtly to get back in the car, “you stupid kid”! Because he’s not at all stupid and he’s no longer a kid either. Maybe mad as a hatter from time to time but also a lot of fun. 

I decided to walk for a while because you seldom get to walk between two high walls of snow, especially not in Brittany! And especially not on such a sunny and warm day!

And my preferred "shortcutter" kept on having fun until we got back onto Highway 88.

Once there, he finally set his mind on getting as soon as possible to this very improbable place called Ahwhanee, our door to Yosemite National Park.

There were no more shortcuts during this trip but a lot of driving around the landslides which probably made up for missed opportunities to drive off the beaten track.

*Good Night, and Good Luck*