In Chars, France

The road ends, and I am not sure which way to go. There is an unpaved path heading straight ahead, and I decide on that, even though it has a barrier in front with signage (in French) describing it as a hiking trail. I am tired from pulling my new suitcase with the broken wheel. The map I check earlier online has me headed towards locked gates on a path over top of a hill, and this road is alongside. The topographic "V" of a stream relief is visible to me as I plan, so the hill is no surprise. But the small pebbles in the other road over the hill makes heading back the better option. My suitcase is heavy, but at least three wheels are still working.

Ahead is a forest, titled Bois du Moulin de Noisement, and the path is a continuation of the rode and no less wide. It is beautiful. At the end is a large house, but no sign that this is my hostel. I turn left and head over the train tracks to reach a paved road, but then again this does not look right. The large house is probably my hostel. I turn back and find a door which is actually a door within a gate, and head into the most wonderful garden. There is a large lawn and a brook, with a huge willow tree, and various buildings in states of repair and disrepair. It looks very peaceful.

I have a tour with the caretaker, and we negotiate so that he will speak French, and I English. I am able to put my laundry in two machines, and head off to the store that he describes. I will return quickly enough to put my washing on the lines since the store is only two kilometers away. I follow his directions to keep left at each instance, as the road wraps around the hill. A mother is watching her young children on bicycles. She is yelling at the younger girl, but I cannot figure out what is the issue. I think she wants her to slow down. It is a country village, and they are probably on a daytime break. The houses and church look like some are eight hundred years old, and some newer, but using a technology that dates back as far. I continue on as the road takes me. It is much farther than two kilometers.

I head to an area where forest and fields give way to a panorama, a most spectacular view. There are rolling hills and farmland interspersed with copses of trees in the distance.There is wild lettuce growing along the side of the road, and I try some for energy. I have not eaten much today. The fields are mostly wheat, with some ripe and golden, and others still green. Along the margins is where I walk, and there are the few red poppies and other plants growing up. Here is where I step to get out of the roadway when a car comes. They are infrequent. I think of the poem "In Flanders fields..." about the wars and the poppy as a symbol of grief.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Two days earlier and I am in Dunkirk with my daughter. We come here as an homage to the movie which introduces a generation to the devastating loss of France during World War II, and the aid the British are giving. We take a train from Lille, France where we are staying. We want to stay in Geneva, or in Brussels, but the prices were very expensive, and Lille is cheaper than either. I find out later that there is a huge storm in France's southeast, and we are very lucky to have chosen Lille. It is a charming city, and peaceful. We navigate to our hostel successfully, and are given a wonderful two-bed dorm room to ourselves, so we can spread out our things and relax.

On our first day we head to Brussels, and see as much TinTin as we can manage at the Belgian Comic Strip Museum, and then head past the royal palace (which is closed all year except for August) and then to the Belgian Museum of Natural Sciences to see the dinosaurs. My mother works as a docent in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and I think of her as we wander through the halls. There is a large exhibit of iguanadons, and the cast of the skull of a pachycephalosaurus, and many others. One of the dinosaurs on exhibit is an allosaurus that has been in the news. It is exhibited by the Eiffel Tower until it is found out to have been for sale, and is quietly moved to this museum in Brussels while the two million euro transfer to a private owner is being worked out. Originally from China, it is a new species, and in very good shape.

The human evolution exhibit is particularly striking as well. There are life-sized statues made from topographic disks of wood stacked so that the forms are visible but with just enough roughness that the eye must interpret the forms. Life-sized for an australopithecus is short, and it is interesting to see so many different specimens reproduced, some twenty or more.

In Dunkirk the next day we suffer from a diverted train and wait for a bus replacement for 90 minutes in the sun, and then we head for the war museum made from one of the bunkers, and then to the beach were so many horrors occurred. We climb along some newly made heaps of sand and old bits of metal probably from the war. They are in the rusted state where the object itself is obscured by layers of rust that look friable and irregular. Also there are abundant chert, a reminder of how rich this area has been for industry from millenia ago. The stone age would have been much more difficult without such wonderful stones.

I see abundant chert on my walk near Chars as well. I am headed now towards Marines, a village with a store, and the signage says there are all types of services there, but I have been walking for two hours nearly and am not completely hopeful.

I take a few false starts before finding signs that aim towards the center of town, and I walk finally among other people. There is a Moroccan restaurant, and a store which sells produce. The owner is Moroccan and we speak of towns there. Years earlier he worked in Merlifft, a tiny seaside village with only two hotels and a short mainstreet, but the most beautiful beach. It is a destination for surfers, though I well remember the rip tides there some thirty years ago as I visit. The daytime meal is made for everyone, and one has no choice of timing nor ingredients, but it is good.

The pace of life here in the French countryside is no less slow. We talk some and say our goodbyes. I walk back to the millhouse in Chars with a bag of avocados, apples, oranges, raisins, potatoes, tomatoes, and now stop to pick some wild lettuce to supplement my evening meal. I am tired, and enjoy the time back at the hostel with another guest. We talk politics and he is curious about how the aggression between the US and China will work out. I am hopeful.

There is no wifi at this beautiful estate, and it suits me well. Many people come here to go hiking in the surrounding forests and countryside. I put my laundry up to dry. I look at the suitcase, which is only a few days old. My flight from Oulu, Finland to Paris via Stockholm is an easy one, and I see my old suitcase come off the plane at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and yet it fails to appear at the luggage carousel. There are about twenty of us who lose our luggage, and I consider that the entire cart of luggage which I see offloaded from the plane is probably sent somewhere by mistake. I wait an extra three hours at the airport, hoping that mine will appear, and then head to Paris with my daughter who also has been waiting, and has summer school the next day. Neither of us can easily wait any longer. It is a wonderful reunion and we talk about her stay in Paris on the train.

Our last time together is in Southeast Asia, a visit to see my place of work in Ho Chi Minh City, and also to take in the sights of Singapore, Melbourne, Perth, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. We speak of how women are poorly treated in some places, and she leaves with a new suitcase filled with shoes from Vietnam bought cheaply.

This now not a year later, and she helps me manage the trains and subway to my hostel. I am staying about three blocks from the Moulin Rouge, and my first night is spent looking for food, and sweatpants I can change into, since all I have now is the clothes on my back and my backpack with a computer and a few necessities, like a padlock for hostel lockers and jacket, gloves, scarf and hat for cold weather.

I sleep in my clothes, coming back to the hostel at three in the morning after walking for miles and enjoying the excitement that is Paris. It is my first time spending more than a few hours in the city, and I am struck by how diverse the people are, and how friendly. The district itself is a bit over the top with its sex-toy shops and prostitutes still lining the streets, and drunks. I spend some minutes talking with some Tunisians and singing and carrying on. Paris is young and its people are enjoying life mostly. It lives up to its reputation. Even though I am paying nearly 50 euros for a bed in a dorm, by the time of our departure for Lille, I have fallen for this city, and I think the price is not too much. The people are so carefree and open to adventure.

I buy a new suitcase and one change of clothes and bedclothes in the morning at Monoprix, and spend about 240 euro. It is not out of line, and important since our trip to Lille will be held up if I don't have any clothes. The old suitcase arrives in the middle of the night before our departure, and I am able to transfer everything to my new bag. The old has a broken wheel, and is ready for retirement. The hostel by the Moulin Rouge have said they are happy to have my bag from the airport delivered here even after I have left, but I am happy that it arrives, and there are no loose strings. Our trip to Lille sees us in the city at the same time as an exhibition of street art from Mexico, and we comment on the Day of the Dead motif and other wonderful juxtapositions, alongside ancient cathedrals.

My time in Finland is good, and I am sad to leave the far north. I meet new friends and see old ones, and help to promote a conference on philosophy of education next year that will be held in Mexico City. For Europeans, travel to Mexico seems so far. Yet the time involved is no different from a long train ride. Some colleagues are promising not to fly in planes anymore, and I joke about taking the train to Siberia, and then a ferry to Alaska and then down the coast. Ships are much more polluting than planes even, and I wonder about my own travel around the world. I am not hopeful for a solution to climate change, though I keep working to make it happen. The theme in Mexico City will be Education, the Environment, and Sustainability.

Here in Chars, about 50 km outside of Paris, I notice how France has kept its traditional agriculture close as one of its national dreams. This reminds me of a similar sentiment in India, where so many people are hoping that the country's transformation will not lead directly to factory work, but rather will maintain some of its traditional agricultural way of life. As humans, we evolve along with working the land, and are well-suited to this lifestyle, to living in groups, extended families and relations. There is a warmth that city life can work hard to replace, perhaps with beautiful concerts and creativities that are the focus of Helsinki and other cities, yet I wonder whether we will only be partially human in the future. Human happiness in the countryside notwithstanding, what neglect there is in cities makes humanity work hard to think of new possibilities. No doubt machines will become more integrated into our lives in the near future, and those people with brain-machine interfaces will probably dream dreams that are significantly different from those visiting my sleep last night in a dormroom with ten beds, and windows open to the beautiful and fragrant night air of the French countryside.

I sit now in a big hall on the second floor in partially wet trousers, the driest pair I can find from the rack, and plan the day. I will hike up to the village proper and look for a cafe with wifi, and if none are there will head to Paris to go online. It is nice to be away from the technology, but I need to check on my next hostel reservation and review two articles for different journals. It is only an hour by train. Or perhaps I will abandon that idea and spend the day hiking. There is still food in the refrigerator downstairs, and the skies are filled with billowy white clouds.

The couple who were here yesterday now leave on their journey, and I give the wife a slip of paper with the name of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's book Laoco?n, as she works as an artist dealing with time. Lessing's book is a strong attempt to draw distinctions between temporal and static arts, and the different role that each might play in conveying meaning. I include the name of Science Gallery International, a new consortium of university galleries putting on exhibitions related to science, as they may show her work. Their car pulls away and I am left in this big house and mill from the 12th century for the next several hours if I wish. There are old books and antiques, and birdsong. Nature is calling me, and I will answer.