Day 282 ....somewhere beyond Bazas....
Some days time drags and my feet list after hours and hours on a dirty track. 'Bed' is a tormenting desire and to be clean, a lament. I am a Tent Dweller. I sleep in the forests by wood piles, on bracken watching bugs crawl up my mosquito net as its plactic-bag-covering flitters and slaps in the breeze. Tonight I need The Others, I need to be close enough to feel safe and far enough away for Peace. I intend sleeping on the fringes of Pélerin society, on the weeds outside a Gite...
...So, after arriving in Bazas, eating a gourmet omelette with salad and coffee and cake, after visiting the beautiful cathedral and racing around town searching for an internet fix, I left town. For hours I followed the Voie de Vèzelay signs along a leafy ancient track until finally at dusk I arrived.... somewhere, elsewhere but nowhere close to the Gite. I asked directions, then asked again and again until a teenager suggested I sleep at the Halte Nautic, a public camping place beside a highway, opposite a grand Boulangerie in the village of ....
And off I went to the freebie camping site feeling on edge and unsure. I have two Safety Rules and I was about to break them both: Never pitch camp near a motorway. Never sleep within view of a house, a village or town. There are too many variables.
I strung up my net beside an ancient mill pond, behind trees as overhead storm clouds gathered and the wind rendered my plastic useless. I slithered into my sleeping sack then rolled on my side and lay there scared, spying on the world through a peep hole beside my head. By now there were three campervans at the site and I could see someone outside the WC as cars whizzed by in the distance. After 5 minutes I thought, No, this won't work. It's definely going to rain. There's a barbecue shelter with tables and a bench, perhaps I could sleep over there? So I dismantled my' tent', stuffed it in my pack then hauled it to within a few metres of the others. I set up 'house' under the bench. But as I lay beneath the kitchen sink my 7th sense became hyper alert (not my 6th sense which never seems to rest, but the one with hackles and antenae and a thousand ears) and no matter how hard I reasoned with myself, analysed my emotions and responses, I didn't have Peace. And just as my imagination began to go wild and ghastly images of blood and guts and murder appeared, from overhead came
A VOICE.....................................
Bon Soir, Madame.
Mum wants to know, would you like to sleep at our place tonight?
And I lept out of my three-sided shack, stuffed my belongings plus all the spiders and dust they had accumulated into my pack. The teenager! He whipped out his Mobile, phoned home and minutes later I was whisked off in 'Mum's' beat up car.
That night I slept in Maman's double bed. I don't know where she slept. The next day she made me café au lait and kissed me when I left......and no, I didn't bite her and kick her in the shins.....
-Lovingkindness
