Cave Paintings, Fossil Destruction, and Historic Weed-Whacking

So it's been a while, but I've some stories to tell, which will hopefully improve the quality of content, if not style.

La Préhistoire
You know that ever since you first heard there were millenia-old cave paintings in some caves in southern France you've been itching to go to Lascaux or a similar site. Well, a couple of days ago Christian decided to take us to la Grotte de Rouffignac in the afternoon.

Me being me, I slept most of the ride there, but I woke up shortly before the hungry mouth of the cave came into view. We passed a couple of groups of elementary-school-aged kids on a field trip; a damn-sight better than Blue Springs or the old Sanford High School back home, I must say.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos to post, because (for preservation's sake) they wouldn't allow us to take photos in the cave. Fortunately, I do have a guide book for the Cave if you'd like to take a look sometime. (And, of course, I'm sure Google Image Search would work, too.)

Unlike most of the caves I've been in before (all two or three of them?), they use an electric train here to make sure we stay on track and don't touch anything. Despite my initial suspicions that this would diminish the experience (which turned out not to be entirely true, though it did feel a little more Disney than I would've liked), the train definitely serves its purpose and probably helps out a lot for the older visitors and for liability considerations--I mean, the path we took was a kilometer or two (can't remember the details, and not going to look them up).

Another cave created by water flow millions of years ago, this one lacks the classic stalactites and stalagmites (remember which is which, class?), but I missed the reason why. Most of the rock is fairly soft, calcite or sandstone or something like that, with bits of semi-rusted looking rock sticking out in odd clumps and nodules forming the other strata. The largest part of the cave was maybe 20 meters on each side with a mini waterfall dripping from the ceiling due to the recent rains--the water now is the highest it's been in at least 15 years or so, if I recall correctly.

Deeper in the caves we find some mammoths etched into the walls, then painted rhinoceroses, then more etchings, paintings on odd rock formations taking advantage of natural features to simulate depth and reality. After viewing on particular leg of the tunnel (for the benefit of J-Mac, Dave G, and others, that was originally typed [unintentionally] as "tunner"), we doubled back and descended to the most spectacular portion where the cieling was covered with more than sixty animal outlines, most of which could never bee seen at a single time when first painted (the cave was once much shallower than it is now). Surrounding us at this moment were the old hibernation nests of bears from millenia past, up at about eye-level because they excavated a portion of the room for the rail tracks and for the ability to see all the paintings.

I always feel something primeval in a cave--probably one of those deep-ingrained collective memories of humanity--the shelter, the mystery, the awe. Who wants to come with me next time, and we'll try to go spelunking?

Le Travail Continue
Apparently the upstairs bathroom hasn't been smelling too hot lately; I personally didn't notice a thing, but I don't have to use it all that often, and Pascale and Christian have a master bath up there too, so maybe that's what they were talking about. The result is that we've been digging up some old plumbing to fix the ventilation; translation: I took some rock-splitting tools to the rock forming the foundation for one of the buildings here, rock which's probably been there for millions of years. In fact, I know it's been here millions of years, though probably undersea at some point, because of the seashell fossils I found therein. Pity, but we wouldn't want a stinky house, would we?

After putting in a good few hours yesterday, Christian decided to take us to see some castles. The plural there is particularly important: Dordogne must've figured quite highly in the Hundred Years' War and several others because there are French and English castles scattered throughout the region. Specifically, the valley we visited had at least four or five castles dating from (I'm assuming) various periods.

The castles were closed to visitors when we went past, but they were still a sight to see. Almost more notable, however, was the friend's house that we visited. One of Christian's friends asked the mayor of the city for permission to build on the side of one of the rocky outcroppings on the valley wall. Thinking him crazy, the mayor gave him permission, resulting in a beautiful home I could never afford but will always want with a view thus far unrivaled by any other during my visit to the region.

On the way back we stopped in Sarlat, which was the most beautiful city in France during the Medieval period (according to Pascale) and is everything you'd expect from a French town as old as that: gorgeous historic buildings and streets leading every which way influenced by history, and influencing history, too. Throw in a little tourism and you've got the right idea. Gorgeous place, despite the tourism, which is fortunately pretty understated (at least in the areas we visited).

Heading out of town, one of my recurring thoughts struck me: how in the world does society sustain itself? Consider the number of customers it takes to support a business and think about how many of those you pass each day. It's really just incredible to me each time I think about it, especially when one considers cities that've been around for hundreds of years sustaining themselves like that.

Débroussaillage
Today's been fairly tame so far. I took a couple hour break mid-post before this section and had a little nap. This morning Pascale whacked some weeds while Kelly and I collected the fallen grass to dump with the rest of the weed compost. After that I got to have a go with the weed-eater, which ran more smoothly than the one back home, not for any really technical reason, but just because there was a convenient harness to help stabilize it and hold it up (it's old and it's heavy). As I was clearing the brush at the edge of the property, I found remnants of some old stone walls beneath all the mess; cool what history we can discover on a daily basis here.

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Apparently Le Falgueyret, this small clump of houses a few minutes' drive from town used to be pretty populated. Obviously it was never a major city, but you can tell if you look at the buildings around here--and the foundations where there used to be buildings--that there was definitely a small community. I wish I could find some images of the place, but no luck so far.

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I've written up some brief descriptions of some of the people here, like Christian who's standing right in front of me just now straightening up some papers, so I'll post some of those sometime soon, maybe tomorrow.

If anyone wants more up-to-the-minute reporting than this, I'll add a link to my Twitter feed on the navigation bar to your left. I should also be adding some entries that are either in French or do not directly apply to my travels so much as to philosophy and pondering life's deep questions, so feel free to skip those if they don't make sense (y'know, either because of the language, or the nonsense I'll be spouting). Also, feel free to comment and whatnot, give me feedback so I know which bits you enjoy reading and which bits not so much; the journal's still mine, but I'll see if I can be accomodating.

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Also, I've heard that a bunch of people from Fiserv have been reading, so hello to all of you. Hello, and love, to my family and Ashley, of course. And bonjour, Madame (at least, Sam said you'd been reading). Let's see...am I forgetting anyone? Oh yeah, my friends and random passers-by: hello to you, too ^^ (I noticed some traffic coming from Daniel's journal and from Facebook, so I know you're out there ^.~)

Until next time, Peace.