Fountain 43 Bull Fountain, Tende 20 August

Kensho

So far it has been a long and good journey.

“To mount the ox is to become one with your true nature; once united with it you’re already home. Flute and hands beat in harmony with the 10,000 things. 

All things, directly perceived, form the path (Tao) of the enlighten one.

To realize your place in this flow of events there is neither joy nor sadness, 

rather infinite satisfaction. Once achieved, this realization of the perfect 

harmony of all things will never be voluntarily renounced.”

One of the more humble fountains in Tende- used by bicyclists,

 walkers, locals, and me on my way to and from the museum.

The more flattering viewpoint as somehow the bull had lost one of his horns.
Made from metal, it would require quite a blow to break off.

                                                      Horned petroglyph from Mt. Bego

Looking down from the north east.

The cemetery in Tende was perched high up a slope at the back of the town.

Quiet. Only me and a strong breeze.

 

 I've always had a fascination for cemeteries. For years it was driven by a macabre fear nurtured by horror films and ghost stories.

Now they are a place of refuge from crowds and the sense of futility which can come from too much travel and self indulgence.

As Tende used to be on the Italian side of the border,

many people, both alive and dead, had originated from there.

Fountain 42 A Source in Parc Mercantour 17 August

 

Mt. Bego

my ultimate destination

Some journeys are too sacred and profound to record hastily in a blog setting.

However, Mt.Bego, 2872m, the site of my Sorcier, required two attempts in two years, over 4000 miles on minor roads with my beautiful motorbike, Louise, 24 hours of walking, 42 recorded fountains, perhaps 100 unrecorded fountains, uncountable baguettes, 

bottles of water, camp sites, and more importantly, the people I met along the way.

The name Bego, is possibly derived from an early Indo-European language: "be" meaning sacred mountain and bull god, and "go" meaning cow or earth goddess. 

In 1460, Pierre de Monfort wrote "C'etatit lieu infernal avec que figures de diables et mille démones partout taillez en rochiers ". It was a hell place with devil figures everywhere engraved in the rocks.

 Approximately 70,000 petroglyphs, carved around 5000 years ago

have been discovered in this area and I came to find just one, the engraving of Le Sorcier.

 Several years ago I had found his illustration in a book destined

 to be re-pulped at the local recycle centre.

 I tore the drawing from the book and took it home with me.

I was charmed by his vulnerability: his little hands held up over his head and his down turned mouth. 

After a time the picture got buried in my studio, and some years later it turned up, 

 late one night in a box of mixed random stuff. 

I fell in love with him again and made several little lino/mono prints 

oblivious to who he was and his significance.

A couple months later, during a flying visit to Grenoble, 

I happened across a photographic exhibition, and there, framed and hanging on the wall 

was my beloved Sorcier.

I contacted the photographer, Emmanuel Breteau, and he pointed me in the right direction to find him.

http://breteau-photographe.com/galerie/vallee_merveilles_1.php

 

The page from the book

 

 One of the many prints

other work about Le Sorcier is on my website

www.meganplayers.co.uk and facebook Megan Players Art.

 I will be having an exhibition at Birdwood House, 

Totnes, England in October 2015

My photograph of Le Sorcier on the day we finally met.

Examples of other petroglyphs at Mt. Bego.
The engraving on the right is also illustrated on the page taken from the book.

   

The terrain 

    

The weather can change quickly from hot sun to cold storm with

lightening and thunder and there is virtually nowhere to take shelter.

My new Italian friend fills a cup with water from a source we found beside the path on our the climb to the guest house at the base of Mt. Bego.

to read more about my Italians, see the post

Gli Belli Italiani 22 August

Fountain 41 Scarlet Geraniums Tende 15 August

 

 

 Tende

Some places never look as good in a photograph as they do when you are there breathing in its air.

Tende is on the Salt Route and located within the Parc Mercantour in the French Alps. It has been populated since 690 and for centuries it has been traded back and forth between France and Italy. In 1947, as part of the war settlements, it was ceded to France. Here the boundary between France and Italy is determined by the watershed line between the two countries.

 This line of mountain tops contains more than 20 summits exceeding 2,000 meters. 

I return again to this place in a second attempt to find le Sorcier, the god of thunder.

I arrive at the campsite ill and exhausted. 

As I unpack my tent there are thunderclaps and lightening 

and I know he is greeting me and that this time we will meet.

 

Outside the church of St. Elmo

Inside the church

 

Martyrdom of St. Elmo

St. Elmo, aka Erasmus of Formiae, still wearing his bishop's mitre is being methodically disemboweled as his intestines are wound around a windlass.

 Apparently there is a bit of confusion over his death, however. Some accounts

 say that despite earlier torture which left him unscathed, 

St. Elmo died a peaceful death. Other accounts were that he was a patron saint of sailors 

and as such would have had the windlass as his symbol. Perhaps in an attempt to jazz up an otherwise

ordinary story, it was declared that the windlass was instrumental in his death, giving rise to a 

new, and improved, form of torture. According to religious art historian, Rosa Giorgi, 

 this is one example where imagery influenced hagiography.

In addition to being the patron saint of sailors, St Elmo is also the patron saint of explosives workers, ordnance workers, and women in labor.  He is also invoked against colic, intestinal disorders, stomach diseases, and storms.  He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a group of saints regarded as special protectors against various illnesses.

Fountain with scarlet geraniums

 

Fountain with cute baby

Fountain 40 Fountain on the Old Toll Bridge, Sospel 14 August

 

In the 5th Century, Sospel was an important stop on the Route de Sel 

on the Royal Road from Nice to Turin. It provided water and shelter

for traders and their animals as they delivered salt to preserve fish and tan hides, etc.

The old toll bridge, a fortified bridge with a guard tower in the centre, was built sometime in the 11-13th centuries to cross the river Brevera and join the two sides of the town.

During the war it was bombed by the Germans to prevent contact between
the French Resistance ("The Maquis") and the Italians.
After the war was over, the bridge was rebuilt using the original stone.



Interesting information lifted directly from Wikipedia:

The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during the Occupation of France . Initially, they were composed of men who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire (STO) to provide forced labour for Germany.

To avert capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups. Most of the Maquis cells took names after the area they were operating in. The size of these cells varied from tens to thousands of men and women.

It was standard practice among the Maquis to identify members by wearing a Basque beret because it was common enough not to arouse suspicion but distinctive enough to be effective.

Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of Brittany and southern France. They relied on guerrilla tactics to harass the Milice and German occupation troops. The Maquis also aided the escape of downed Allied airmen, Jews and others pursued by the Vichy and German authorities. Maquisards usually relied on some degree of sympathy or cooperation from the local populace. In March 1944, the German Army began a terror campaign throughout France. This included reprisals against civilians living in areas where the French Resistance was active Oradour massacre, Tulle murders). *** The Maquisards were later to take their revenge in the épuration sauvage that took place after the war's end.

Although the Maquis used whatever arms they could get obtain, they heavily relied on airdrops of weapons and explosives from the British SOE. SOE parachuted agents in with wireless sets (for radio communication) and dropped containers with various munitions. The Maquis also used German weapons captured throughout the occupation, the Mauser 98k rifle and MP 40 submachine gun being very common. 

A French Resistance Fighter is quoted saying, "They are as common as hookers on the streets of Paris, and they get about as much action."

*** see my posts Martrys of Gabaudet  24th July and Ordour-sur-Glane 4th September

   The fountain on the toll bridge looks down the valley and across towards

 brightly painted houses and pots of red and pink geraniums.

I watched a father help his young son to turn his head to drink from the stream of water
then wiped his face with a white, well ironed handkerchief.

In 1370, Sospel  sided with the Pope of Avignon against the Anti-Pope in Rome. This raised the status of the town's church into the Cathedral of Sainte Michel. Placed on the existing Route de Sel enabled pilgrims to visit, support their political/religious stance and help fund the impressive collection of relics.

 During my visit a sound engineer was tapping microphones and heavily breathing the ubiquitous "testing testing" which echoed over the heads of the saints and the other three visitors. His control desk was tucked into the corner by a side chapel and the barrier preventing relicophiles, such as myself, from entering the chapel was down. As I craned into the darkness the electronic sensor detected me and clicked on the spotlights and illuminated display cases.
I was in ossuary heaven. The three walls of the chapel were plastered in relics, including a small piece of St. Boniface, who was born in 672 in Crediton, Devon, a little town near to where I live.
 Alas I had only a minute in paradise before a rotund and irritably officious man chased me out.

The dulcet tones of Bjork rose up into the nave, washed across the ceiling and down the pews.
 The engineer smiled and turned up the volume.

A moment of reflection on my place in the world

Fountain 39 Roquebilliere 13 August

 

private sink with a view

camping at Sainte Martin Vesubie

I have always preferred brushing my teeth under the stars rather than in front 

of a mirror. It gives one the opportunity for serious contemplation about 

eternity and time to pick out the constellations: Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia.

While I was brushing a meteorite storm showered the heavens with bright falling lights and I wondered about the people who connected up the stars to create the animals, zodiac signs etc.

 As a small child I had a picture book showing Arab shepherds lounging around a campfire with their lambs and pointing towards the night sky. I had never considered that there would have been learned scholars applying mathematical equations and recording their findings on cuneiform tablets.

We are brainwashed at such an early age by irresponsible illustrators.

 The "truth" is that:

the oldest catalogues of stars and constellations are from Old Babylonian astronomy c1830 BC.

the Book of Job c 700-400 BC makes reference to a number of constellations, 

including "Arcturus, Orion and Pleiades"

the Greeks adopted the Babylonian system in the 4th century BC and twenty Ptolemaic constellations are directly adopted from the Babylonians while another ten have the same stars but different names.

 

My lovely Italian campsite neighbour on his way to Spain.

We stayed up long after the last tent had been zipped tight, 

whispering under the showering stars and drinking herb tea.

   
                                                          Fountain 39   Roquebilliere 

I watched a man set up his restaurant. 

He pushed a tea trolly across the pavement, salt cellars and china rattling and clanking.

In a careful hand, with one eye, he rewrote his menu board. 

The other eye was on Louise and I.

The Breakfast

The View

                             

 

         

          The Winding Road                 

                           
                                                               The Stairway to Heaven.
                                                                Although it was locked.