A Walk in the Countryside

Yesterday, I went for a walk. I set out about half past ten. It was the perfect weather, probably around 72 degrees, the sky a clear, cloudless blue. The road in front of the house meanders through wide, open fields, gently curving left and right, but always flat. It’s a single lane road, but the grass to either side is cut short, so that cars can pass each other when the need arises. Some properties have a few trees, and in the shade, it’s cool. But mostly the immediate horizon is uninterrupted by trees or buildings. A slight breeze gusts through from time to time.

Leaving the house, I turn left. Right next to the house is an open pasture with two cows. Their pasture sits right against the side and back of the house, so we’re on a first name basis. Today they’re deep into the field, so I can’t tell if they moo or flick their tails at my passing. I’m sure they didn’t. I’ve never merited any excited mooing, even though they seem to moo all the time.

After being snubbed passing the neighbor’s cow pasture, I’m surprised when I get to the next field on the left. It was all brown when I last walked a few days ago, but now plants have sprouted. As far as the eye can see, the long, wide field is populated with little bunches of green, a perfect trifecta of three oblong leaves that have pushed their way to the surface. Each sits about two inches from the other in long columns down the field and up over the rise. Spring has sprung, and planting season has begun.

I continue down the road, passing a few bikers along the way. I nod and say bonjour. I pick up the pace – I’d like to make it to the bridge and back within the hour. On the right, a vast field of green sways and dances in the breeze. I’m no farmer and have no basis for my judgment, but for some reason I’m certain they’re an older, wiser, mature version of whatever young sprout was growing on the left. At knee height, the fronds sprawl from the road back as far as the eye can see, a deep, healthy green that rivals the dazzling blue sky in its intense color. The sun, its power unchallenged by trees or buildings, beams down fiercely on my skin. The air is cool, but my skin tingles warmly under the unfettered rays.

About half a mile onwards, I take a turnoff on the left. Here on this new road the vegetation thickens, and the sun and I play hide and seek. We’re nearing the Gers, the river that gives the region its name. The road dips down, towards the river, finally ending in a low bridge. There’s a warning – pont submersible. When the river runs high, the bridge becomes completely submerged underwater, lost in the current. The narrow bridge has no rails – it’s like a concrete slab perched over the water – so I squat down, leveling myself only two feet or so above the water, and look for fish. The river ebbs and flows lazily, clearly moving towards a destination, but not rushing to get there. I can’t see anything within the murky green depths. Further up, in a large town called Auch, I had been able to see a silver fish or two dart along the banks – but today, my slippery friends choose to hide.

The bridge is my turn-around point. I’ve come about a mile or so, and with any longer the sun will start to beam down with full intensity. That’s not to mention my aversion to exercise. I climb back up the dusty turnoff road and soon have made my way back to the main road. It occurs to me, as I look back at this turnoff, that the field I’m facing appears so untouched – it looks like it could have looked a hundred years ago. Apart from the white streaks of passing planes in the sky, there is no shopping mall in the distance, no candy wrapper tumbling along in the wind, not a single human footprint in the field. This image in front of me is frozen in time.

Back on the main road the foliage has thinned, and the sun floods the road with light. I stride along confidently, until a movement to my right makes my heart pound. A small snake had been coiled at the edge of the road, sunbathing languidly. With my approach, he unravels himself and, to my relief, starts to slither into the grass. He is small enough not to be a major threat, but my heart continues to pound as I scamper away.

A similar moment happens with a bumblebee. A fat, mostly black bee circling clumsily in front of me seems not to notice my approach and, like a big fat oaf, crashes right into my chest. I’m not particularly afraid of bees, but I’m stunned by how hard he lumbered into me. I’m afraid he’ll blame me for hitting him and seek revenge. I break into a brisk jog, as far as my asthmatic lungs will allow, until I’m sure he and his brethren are long in the distance. To my left, a cat sunning himself in the middle of a small house’s front yard watches me wheeze. His gaze is somehow aggressive. Alone in the yard, he watches me like a guard dog, threatening me as a German Shepard would. Probably taking my wheezing for the weakness that it is, he feels it’s safe to let me pass with a warning. I’m not worth getting up for. He blinks.

I’m nearing the house now. There’s the field with the little green sprouts, and next the pasture with tufts of lush green grass. Then comes our house and the yard. I round the house towards the other side where I see the chicken, pacing idly by the pool. We first saw her Easter morning. I woke up and looked out my window, and there she was, watching me. She has hung around the house ever since, afraid of humans, but in our midst nonetheless. I say hello. I realize my error and hastily say bonjour instead.

Like all the other animals on my journey, she doesn’t do much to acknowledge my presence, turning her back to me as she rustles around in the bushes. I go inside.

I like to imagine someone 100 years earlier seeing a similar thing.

Arachnophobia

Adjusting to life in the countryside

Everyone's got fears. Heights, confinement, death, small children, birds - there's a lot to be afraid of. A lot of the time, our fears aren't really rational. Roller coasters don't normally break, but there's a chance this one might. The probability of dying in a plane crash is much lower than the likelihood of dying in a passenger vehicle, yet most people fear planes more than cars. It's hard to talk ourselves out of fearing something scary, even when it doesn't make sense to fear it. Anyways, this is an unnecessarily long and abstract lead in to describe one of my main fears... spiders.

I've just completed the first week of my stay here in beautiful Fleurance, France. Fleurance is located in the Gers, about an hour or two from Toulouse. It's the real countryside; beautiful rolling hills of farmland, flowers, tilled earth, cows idly grazing, birds and horses and lots of fresh air. It's nothing like any of the places I've lived. The most rural place I've lived is the suburbs of New York City, and even then, I did my best to spend as little time outside as possible. To make it clear, we're dealing with a girl whose least favorite season is summer, because it means spending time outside.

My very first day, a friend of the family I'm staying with picked me up at the closest train station, in a nearby village. Train station probably isn't the right word - it was a place where the train happened to stop, but there was no station in sight. The parking lot was just a dirt cutoff right off the tracks with room for three or four cars to park. That's when I thought to myself - Lord, where am I. And, more importantly, why do I put myself in these situations?

****

My room is built into the main house building, but it's separate and has it's own entrance all the way on the other side. The third night, the father walked me from the side of the house where the family stays over to my room, since the walk is very dark without a flashlight. I get in the room, turn on the light, everything looks okay. But when I really look, I see a spider has weaseled its way in during the .2 seconds the door was open, and jammed itself up into the corner right by the door.
"Okay," I think to myself. "He's playing it cool. He's bunched himself up. He doesn't want to be seen. Let's just wait to see if he causes problems."
I hastily don my pajamas and, after thoroughly checking the rest of the room for unwanted visitors, climb into bed. I mentally set the timer for twenty minutes - if the spider doesn't move in that time, I'll go to bed. I turn off the main light and leave the bedside light illuminated.

About fifteen minutes goes by, and I'm starting to feel comfortable. I'm exhausted from all my travels, even three days in, and lying in bed has made me sleepy. I've been staring at the wall with the spider so hard that my eyes hurt. I start to think, hmm, maybe I should close my eyes, when...
I see a single dark brown leg inch its way out, testing the waters. Then another. The spider is slowly moving its way along the wall. He's out. He's active. And it looks to me like he's heading towards another spider nearby, one I'd deemed small enough not to be troublesome. He's stretched out to his full length now, huge and menacing and ready for dinner. Unfortunately, his dinner plans put him on a straight path in my direction.

Now. I know, as the rational person that I am, that no real harm can come to me from this creature. He's not going to eat me... not by himself, at least. The worst he can do is bite me, or crawl on or near me. (I've heard some of the horrifying things spiders can do like crawl into your mouth or ears and lay eggs inside your head, but that's not even the kind of thing I'm worried about. My fears are more basic, more of the genre of a spider just being in my general vicinity).

I start to panic. He's up too high for me to reach with anything. And he's also pretty darn ginormous. To hit him with a shoe, I'd have to use a work boot, and I'd have to be extraordinarily accurate because he's fast. I'm trapped in the room with a monster, and there's no way out. I can't get to sleep with him hovering over me, I can't stay up all night watching him either. Every scenario seems to lead to eight hours of misery to come. Everything is terrible, life is miserable, I should have stayed home where we have svelte cosmopolitan city spiders. This country life is not for me.

Suddenly - a flash of brilliance! The bathroom door is just slightly ajar. It forms a triangle of sorts. I'm at the top, the bathroom is along the wall adjacent to me, and the spider is on the opposite wall. His trajectory is sort of on the hypotenuse, if any of this geometry nonsense makes sense. If I could dash in the bathroom, I'd have a completely spider-free area and could potentially get a little sleep.

A major thank you to my mom who has talked me through many of these situations.

Now for the logistics. I get up slowly, so as not to startle the spider into attacking. I lift the mattress. Too heavy to carry to the bathroom alone (not to mention the fact that it probably won't fit. This is a normal sized bathroom we're talking about). Okay, that's fine. I gather the comforter, blanket, and pillow, and a couple shoes just in case I have any surprises while inside my safe zone. I look up - the spider seems poised mid-stride, as though unsure what I'm about to do. This is it, my only chance. It's go time.

I grab my giant bundle of bed things, sprint to the bathroom, and immediately close the door. I put a towel down on the very cold tile floor, stuff the bathroom rug under the door crack so nothing would get in, and settle in for an awkward but safe next couple of hours.

The next morning, I gathered my courage and opened the door (the spider was immediately visible, thank goodness, so I could keep tabs on him) hastily put on my clothes, and stepped outside. I requested some assistance with the spider. The dad just came in, grabbed the spider with his hand, and tossed it out the door. Real simple.

I'd be mortified if anyone knew the lengths I went to because of a (very ginormous) spider. If you're not scared of spiders, it seems over the top. If you're from the countryside, it seems downright ludicrous. If the family knew I'd spent the night in the bathroom, they'd very quickly question my sanity. When I showed up at breakfast the next morning with bags under my eyes, I was so embarrassed I blamed it on bad dreams.

But that's the thing about fears. They only really make sense to you. And in the heat of the moment, sleeping curled up with your head tucked between the toilet and the sink just makes so much more sense than the remote possibility that a spider may crawl near you.

So. This story is a pretty good summary of my adjustment to rural life. But I am so grateful for the way the family has welcomed me into their home, and the time here has been lovely. And just think how seasoned and tough I'll be by the end. A real outdoorsy type.

If not, I always have the safety of the bathroom.