(If you have not read the prologue, start here)
The final morning of my four weeks in France had arrived. In Grenoble, a city ringed by the Alps, my fourth base, Nikhil and I had been living in an apartment, heading into the mountains every other day. This day was supposed to be an easy day, just a long, gentle climb nearby. But the evening before, as Nikhil and I talked it over, Nikhil somehow sold me on going all the way to another of the Alps’ famous passes, the Col de la Croix de Fer. I had thought I was done with hard climbs. Somehow, following his enthusiasm blew the weakness right out of me.
By morning, Nikhil was feeling unwell and could not go. It was a shame, but there was nothing to be done. I, however, had already crossed the point of no return in my own mind. I set off alone for the final pass.
I started below a dam, looped around it, and followed the river that fed it upstream. It was a narrow, deep valley, pressed between two towering ranges. The river ran along the valley floor, while the road gradually pulled away from the water and climbed higher.
It was seven in the morning, and even for a Saturday the road was astonishingly empty. A rider would pass me now and then, but this was nothing like the bustle of Alpe d’Huez or the Col du Galibier. Sunlight had not yet reached the birch woods, and after so many days of brutal heat, the cool air felt almost unreal. Morning light struck the ridgelines from the side, drawing sharp borders of shadow and brightness through the air. The parallel lines made a geometric pattern that felt mystical. Geometry, or rather mathematics itself, is where God resides.
From the slopes on both sides, countless streams of water fell toward the river below. The mountainsides were so steep that they looked less like streams than waterfalls. Thin white threads running down distant rock faces reminded me of the mountains of Japan. Each time I passed one of those waters still carving away at the Alps, cool air reached my body. After a week of being beaten down by heat, that alone felt like coming back to life.
At some point, the sound of the river began coming from far below. Suddenly the whole world was wrapped in orange light, and even the trees seemed to have changed species. The view opened up, and the slope eased just a little. I thought I might have arrived in a fairy village, but it was only a small mountain hamlet. Mountains closed in on every side, and thin waterfalls were being drawn down into the valley from all directions. Then again, perhaps it really was a fairy village.
And yet I could not see any break in the mountains where the road might continue. Wait. Where exactly am I supposed to go from here? Tracing the road with my eyes, I realized the valley continued behind a fold of mountain, like a screen folded back on itself. Worse, the route gave up the altitude I had worked so hard to gain, descended all the way to the valley floor, crossed the river, and then climbed the other side. I had just climbed all this way, only to go down again. When you are climbing a mountain by bicycle, a descent is not always a reward. With the steep slope waiting beyond it, this one felt more like debt.
After I crossed the river, the road tilted upward again. Threadlike waterfalls fell on both sides from the mountain pressing close in front of me. The gradient was hard, and even moving slowly took force. Even so, it was a landscape unlike anything I had ever seen. For a while, a single butterfly flew alongside me.
Beyond a slight easing in the climb, a second dam appeared. When I reached the top of it, the world changed completely. The deep valley ended, and a high plateau opened as far as I could see. The air was clear, and the road stretched far ahead through grassland. The notch in the distant ridge was the Col du Glandon; from there, the road would bend gently up to the right toward my final destination, the Col de la Croix de Fer.
The plateau belonged to sheep. Looking more closely, I could see flocks moving here and there across the grass. Shepherds and sheepdogs were nearby. Each flock looked like a single living creature, stretching and contracting, changing shape as it moved like an amoeba or a flock of birds in flight. What does a shepherd’s day look like? Do they ever stay through the night? I imagined the stars spreading overhead.
The road across the open plateau felt far too pleasant to be my final climb. Eventually I reached the Croix de Fer and found myself surrounded by a 360-degree view. I sat at the chalet on the pass and drank a celebratory beer. How many times that week had I felt grateful that, high in the mountains, there were still places where a person could sit down and rest?
As I began the descent, a crowd of riders was coming up from the other side. Their bikes had numbers on them. It seemed to be some kind of event, and with the summit so close, every face looked pained. I must have been making the same face only a short while earlier, yet I already felt as if I belonged to the cheering side. How quickly we forget suffering.
Still, I could not bring myself to leave the cool mountains and return to the hot world below. I ate a crepe at one restaurant on the way down, then had lunch at another. Little by little, I kept pushing back the moment when I would return to the car. Maybe I was lonely at the thought of the journey ending. It was not sadness exactly, but reluctance to let go.
I got back to the apartment in Grenoble around two in the afternoon. I packed, took out the trash, and ate the leftovers. For a week, we had closed the shutters against the heat, carried the fan next to the dining table, and eaten meals with Nikhil in that room. Now it was returning to the room it had been when we first rented it. Around three, I drove off toward Paris.
The plan was to drive about four hours that day and stay overnight in Auxerre along the way. Driving it all in one shot would be too hard, so I stopped midway in Beaune. I wanted to see the historic charitable hospital Sacha had recommended. It had been built for the poor, yet, thanks to lavish donations, was apparently a magnificent building.
But by the time I arrived, the final admission time had passed. I could not see what lay beyond the doors.
At least I could have dinner, so I went into a brasserie. Only after looking it up there did I learn that Beaune is something like the capital of Burgundy wine. Vineyards had apparently been donated to the hospital one after another, and it still makes wine today. At that moment, the charitable building and the vineyards that had spread along both sides of the road into town joined into a single story. Wine shops lined the streets, but it was late, and they were all closed too. Fortunately, the restaurants had excellent lists of wines by the glass. Since it was the end of the trip, I ordered one slightly indulgent glass of local white wine.
I wanted to try many more Burgundy wines. Almost immediately, I felt that I would like to live in this town for a week. The hospital I could not see, the shops that were closed, the wines I did not get to drink. I had only stopped in Beaune for a few hours, and already the town was filling with unfinished business.
I often think the world is like an enormous open book. You can reach for any page, and on each one a story is hidden. For the past month, I had been devouring that book. I rode my bicycle onto unfamiliar roads, looked up whatever appeared in front of me, tasted the food of the place, and exchanged words with the people who lived there. Just when I had immersed myself in one story, the next day I opened another page.
But as the time to close the book draws near, the pages you could not turn begin to loom larger than the ones you read. The closed doors of the hospice were one of those pages. Chris, whom I had met along the Loire, must feel something like this too, and perhaps that is why he keeps setting out again and again.
After dinner, I returned to the autoroute. By the clock it was night, but twilight still lingered in the French sky. The car moved across the land at 130 km/h. Every time I crested another hill, the view changed, and the low sun and clouds made the sky feel enormous. On both sides of the road, sunflower fields and wheat fields spread outward.
I wanted to take photographs. But on the autoroute, I could not stop. Scenes appeared one after another and flowed backward beyond the windshield. I wanted to ride my bicycle through those sunflowers. I wanted to go beyond that hill too. Faced with landscapes I could not capture, all I could think about were the things I still wanted to do.
There was almost no traffic, and as I held the steering wheel, I kept thinking. A month earlier, in a taxi on the way to San Francisco Airport, I had sensed that by the time I returned I would be a different person. I had been almost trembling with excitement at what might happen and how I might change.
But no great revelation was waiting at the end of the journey. I do not think my view of life was transformed. It was closer to the feeling after finishing a beautiful film: the images and voices are still moving inside you, and it takes a little while before you can rise from your seat.
In different parts of France, I had a simulated experience of living there. Each week the house changed, the table changed, and the people I spent time with changed. I would leave the front door by bicycle and return to the same place in the evening. As I repeated that rhythm, I began to feel not as if I were passing through tourist sites, but as if I were sampling someone else’s life. Four separate lives, almost as if I had been allowed to inhabit four different human beings for a while. Each one made me think, yes, this way of living would be good too. French history, culture, language, geography, and wine had all come into much sharper focus. And on the reverse side of that, I also understood a little more clearly how vast the things I still did not understand remained.
I want to spend time in other countries at this same level of depth. I want to trace the footsteps of Rome through Italy, and explore Spain and Portugal. I want to travel all over Japan too. And at the same time, if travel is the experience of a temporary life, I found myself thinking again about what I want to choose next in my actual one.
The place where I arrived late that night in Auxerre was a cheap roadside motel. The room had no air conditioning. My grand meditations ended the moment I stepped into that hot, airless room. I should have spent a little more on lodging. This would be the last night I slept with the door open.
The next morning, before packing the bicycle into its bag, I decided to ride a little around Auxerre. I wanted to get out into the morning air rather than stay in that humid room. As usual, I woke early and assembled the bike. Just as I was about to leave, it began to rain.
It was probably the blessed rain that would end the weeklong heat wave. But why now, in these final hours? With no choice, I ate breakfast first. Even at a cheap roadside motel, the morning baguette was soft and airy. Only in France, I thought with admiration, while wondering if I should simply give up on riding.
Eventually the rain stopped. It might start again at any moment, but I accepted the possibility of getting wet and headed into town. I rode about twenty kilometers. It was early on a Sunday morning, and there was no one in the streets. When I reached the river, the cathedral and towers lined up on the opposite bank like a painting. I made a loop through the quiet town, hurrying a little because of the rain. With the sound of a shoe unclipping from a pedal, the ride of the journey was truly over.
Perhaps because I had already brought the journey to its emotional close on the autoroute the night before, everything after that unfolded matter-of-factly. The airport had no stylish place for a farewell toast, only a single bar. Worse, the wine it served was Argentinian. Is it really acceptable for the gateway to France to send travelers off with Argentinian wine!?
Instead, I bought a bottle of Burgundy sparkling wine at the duty-free shop. The journey could end after I got home and opened it. Even after traveling through France for a month, I had seen only the entrance. Still holding the book I had not finished reading, I became a passenger in the sky once again.