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Beary Homesick The day dawned clear blue. Exiting our forest campsite a farmer passed by on his tractor. I usually had the feeling we were in the middle of nowhere, but there was always someone close by. The water in the creeks was still high. Bugs pelted my face. I hated it when they smacked into my lips and stuck onto my lip balm. We stopped in a small village to buy fruit and bread. Sharon wanted hard cheese, but the little store didn't have any. Amazingly the town didn't have a boulangerie either. It was one of the few places we had come across that didn't have their own local baker. I wondered how villagers were able to get their daily baguette. Did everyone bake their own? The next place turned out to be even smaller. It was inhabited with a few crusty farmers and their dusty wives. That was the only trouble with backroads -- they went to small towns. Often we found places that time had forgotten, but somehow continued to exist in a back eddy of the stream of time. Bales with black plastic chapeaux were stacked in yards. The better to keep them from rotting with all the rain. We were surrounded by tumble down buildings and the smell of barnyard manure. "Is that you?" I asked Sharon. I didn't think of it at the time, but in that town Sharon had one of her worst bouts of homesickness on the entire trip. The smell must have triggered memories of life back on the farm. We learned how they were able to fulfill their daily baguette habit. Luckily, we had arrived at the moment the travelling bakery man sounded his arrival. Going in the direction of the horn blasts we found him in an alleyway waiting for a pleasant woman to make her purchase. We were out of water so we wanted to fill up. Spying a well, I turned the handle round and round, faster and faster. Rusty metal squealed, protesting my efforts. Beginning to sweat I gave up. Not one drop of water had emerged from the spigot. The well was drier than a biscuit fart. Turning into an open drive I asked the farmer for water. He shuffled slowly towards me, looking like a grizzled veteran of too many late night wine bashes. A garden hose laid across the yard. Yet he had the gall to tell me he had no water. I couldn't imagine someone being so cruel as to refuse water to cyclists. If my French was better I would have told him a thing or two. Instead, I thanked the monsieur for his hospitality and told him he should live in Paris. Two kilometers down the road I swung into another farmhouse. The woman at the kitchen sink was in the midst of preparing lunch. After filling our water bottles she asked, "Do you need anything else?" I found it interesting that after someone treated us rudely, almost inevitably the next person we met more than made up for it in kindness. People were basically good and wanted to help others -- we just had to keep reaching out to let them. Calves ran through a field kicking up their heels. At the pace they were setting they must have been quarter cows. Sharon said she had never seen cows run like that before. I wondered what was spookin' those cows? Horses were in a pasture. The recent rain had made a brown stream of fast flowing water through the field. The horses stomped their hooves in the water and playfully splashed each other. Sharon's homesickness was gnawing at her. She did her best grumpy bear routine that I had seen in a long while. Was she upset that I had eaten all the honey? Bears were like that in the spring when they just came out of hibernation. I didn't understand how she could be upset travelling with a saintly companion like me. Twenty-four hours a day with one person for eight months straight did wear thin at times, even if that other person was a saint. Homesickness bit the big one. Part of the problem was that the farm scenery was so familiar to home. Sharon wondered why she had to travel so far to see something we had in our own backyard. She wanted history, art, architecture. She complained we didn't have enough information about the area. We could be right next to something and miss it because we didn't even know it was there. She accused me of not wanting to look at the map to plan ahead. I had the feeling she was about to tell me I was like her left hand -- nice to have, but basically useless. I told her I would look ahead if I thought it would make any difference. Adding to Sharon's dissatisfaction was the fact that her gears were too high. We had entered hills again and her legs and back ached. And, with the sun out for the first time in days, she burned. Sometimes you just couldn't win. It was hot. I was going through much more water than usual. We stopped to ask another woman for water. Telling her I was from Canada started a raft of questions. Her husband was working under the car and she repeated whatever I said to him. At one point she removed her dentures to explain that her husband couldn't talk well because he had no teeth. People did strange things when they tried to overcome the language barrier. An old timer asked Sharon if we were staying at the campground in town. When she told him maybe we would he replied, "No you won't. It's underwater. Beaucoup pluie." Indeed, there had been a lot of rain. Just outside town we followed a small farm road that led to a field of canola and haphazardly strewn bales. The bales laid scattered, like some mischievous giant's play blocks. A small wooded area was situated suitably on high ground. Inside the tent I spent the next hour poring over maps examining various routes. You see, not only was I a saint, but I was a wise one as well. |
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