Four years ago, I spent a month in the French Alps with a particularly wonderful family called the Escalons. Paul and Veronique had sent their younger daughter, Charlotte, to us a few summers before. I spent that month with them hiking mountains, swimming in the Mediterranean, and lounging about the house—mainly with their younger son Jean, who is a year older than me. It was a marvelous month (for me and for my French), and I have missed them a lot. My family has also missed Charlotte and always wanted to meet the Escalons, so Pont-du-Fossé, their village, was stop numero uno on the Magnuson family France trip.
Driving down from Grenoble to Pont-du-Fossé, I kept recognizing lakes and mountains and villages as we got closer and closer to the Vallée du Champsaur. I remembered the shortcut so that we didn’t have to go all the way down to Gap, and then I remembered which road (there aren’t many) in Pont-du-Fossé is the Escalons, and I remembered where their house was and what their driveway looked like, but I could not for the life of me actually find the driveway. We had to go ask at Paul’s office (he is a doctor) for directions, and his secretary actually led us there in her car. The trick was that their house is behind another house, so you had to look for a driveway that kind of branches off another driveway…But we did it, and it felt incredible to be reunited with the Escalons!
They welcomed us with all the warmth that I remember and showed us around their house and their garden. Thus commenced three days of a wonderful visit. I loved it; it was as if my two families were finally combined. We ate deliciously, learned lots of French and English words, laughed frequently, and enjoyed each other’s company immensely. Jean and Charlotte were both home, and they helped me with my Strasbourg situation (depressing subject which has since resolved itself).
Jean and I reminisced about our lazy days during that long-ago summer, when we would sleep in until 9:30 every day and then spend the morning in pajamas. He finished university in the spring and is now working as a physical therapist who does home visits, so he has to get up very early in the morning. I got up at 6:45 most days in Geneva to go to work…We agreed that life is hard in our old age.
We visited a dairy high up on the side of a mountain a bit up the valley from their house one afternoon. The goats were feeding at the time, and the sound of their horns violently striking against the metal manger was deafening. We saw the milking machines and into the room where the cheese is made. Rounds of chèvre were ripening on a table, some with ash sprinkled on top to give a certain flavor and to prevent a crust from forming. We chatted with the owner and her employees for a while and bought faisselles for dessert.
Our grand adventure was a two-day hike centered around the Refuge de Tourrond, which I had actually visited with Escalons—who are rather like a family of mountain goats—on my previous sojourn in France. We hiked to the refuge the first afternoon, arriving in the midst of a hailstorm which soaked my clothes and stung my legs and which made us very happy to have warm beds and a solid roof awaiting us! The refuge guardians cooked us a delicious dinner of soup, bread, and some kind of meat (I forget this detail) with one of their celebrated blueberry tarts to finish. Maddie and Mum very industriously practiced their French under the watchful eye of Véronique. The following morning, we hiked up and around the mountain to the source—la résurgence—of a stream for a picnic and a bit of spelunking with Charlotte and Paul…The French Alps are incredible; I have missed my hikes with the Escalons!
Our final evening, we made pizza in the Escalon’s outdoor wood-fired pizza oven. They built it themselves perhaps eight years ago; it is the size of a small shed and makes absolutely delicious pizza. Ever since Charlotte lived with us and showed us pictures of the oven, my father has dreamed of this pizza. (It was his main goal in visiting the Escalons.) The event was momentous; Maddie and I brought out two bottles of fragolino we had carried all the way from Venice. (Véronique toasted us with the saying Swen had taught her the night before: “Mud in your eyes!”) The pizza assembly technique is very sophisticated—it must be done as quickly as possible to prevent the pizza from sticking to the wooden paddle used to put the pizza in the oven, a tricky process in itself. Aside from overshooting one pizza and spilling its ingredients across the oven floor, Jean cooked and rotated the pizzas masterfully and let Swen, Maddie, and I each have a try.
In their car, Paul and Charlotte guided us through Gap—the city near their village—to the proper roundabout to catch the highway to Uzès, our next destination. Paul had said he would point out the right exit for us. All expecting a hand to point out the window, we suddenly saw Paul’s entire upper half emerge through the sunroof of the car! Grinning, he militantly indicated the proper road with both arms, and we laughed and waved merrily as we drove off towards Uzès.
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