Ah, the sublime pride of a job well done. The feeling was double in the unseasonably warm sun and clear skies. I've been working with my friend Wayne at his On-its-way-to-a-farm farm in the middle of Bretagne. With the exception of two hour lunches, daily trips to the store, and nightly movies, our days were occupied by fencing his property. Often times what was to be simple digging and a little clearing of brush to level the route for the fence turned into full strength dig and deny weeds. Blackberry and Ivy, the old standbys, are here just like Seattle, but Wayne also had a considerable network of fern roots which has over the time he's spent there, broken three garden forks.
"We couldn't be all work and no play!" Wayne declared, and so we took an overnight vacation to Carnac and Rennes. Carnac is a wonderful coastal town still cold and shuttered in March to the occasional tourist wandering through. The real season doesn't begin until after Easter. Even better than the beautiful white sand beaches are the enormous collection of Carnac Stones. Lines and lines of stood stones litter the countryside, so commonplace they've been dug up and used as construction materials in the past.
On the road back to the farm we stopped in Vannes, and walked about with the purpose of rubbernecking and eating kebabs. It's easy for me to be blasé before and after seeing another walled city thousands of years old, but in the moment the magic remains. Wayne's company added a comical intensity of appreciation for the stone work all around. Since buying his farm in France he has been teaching himself the vagaries of building stone walls and houses, and now stops to admire and photograph the mortared cracks between stones.
