For a while I thought that this would be my last summer spent outdoors in the sunshine in the company of others my own age (relatively), with no real worries other than the restrictions placed on us by the governing organization. Then I reflected that, if I’ve learned anything from Maia Dery, growing up doesn’t mean you have to become boring. Consider a year from now: I’ll have graduated from Guilford (God willing), and it’s very possible that I’ll be living in a tent again somewhere in the Andes with OxFam or the Peace Corps or UNICEF. That’s if I’m not still traveling with my family in Ireland on the trip we’ve been planning for the past two years.
This month has further sharpened my focus for what I want to do with my life; it’s shown me that no matter what kind of photographer I become, whether I’m shooting eagles in Tanzania for National Geographic or supermodels in the midst of Indian ruins for Maxim, I don’t want to give up being close to nature.
We actually got the goats on Saturday, six nannies and one kid. They’re pretty skittish around people. I think their smell alone, that pleasant earthy barnyard stink, helps to lend the fort more of an eighteenth-century feel. Sarah tried to convince Thérèse to accept the donkey that the city was offering as well, but she wouldn’t listen.
For my last day, Thérèse assigned me to the welcome desk at the Château. It was boring just sitting there, and I had to bite my tongue when tourists asked whether there was anything more than “just stones” inside the fort, but I was relieved after lunch. It was the windiest day we’ve had so far, and the long entranceway created a giant wind tunnel, so that I had to weigh down the papers on the desk with rocks and listen to the constant rattle of sheets of paper whipping back and forth. And it was cold!
After lunch, for a lack of direction, we didn’t really do much of anything. I got some shots of the goats. Thérèse gave me the keys to St. Blaise and let me catch the bus back an hour early so that I’d have time to pack. For dinner I slurped a bowl of leftover soup and made myself a mushroom sandwich to eat on the train. A new kid, Ken, arrived before the others and I showed him my vacated place in the tent. Thérèse had my passport and ticket locked upstairs in a box with the others’ valuables, so as the minutes ticked by and she still wasn’t back from the Château, I began to get stressed. After a couple of tense phone exchanges, she called a taxi to take me to the station. When she got back she calmly walked upstairs and handed me my documents. The taxi arrived a minute later and as I got in everyone turned out to wish me goodbye. The driver drove like a madman to the station and got me there twenty minutes early.
As the train wound down through Argentière and Mont-Dauphin, the mountain peaks were lit a brilliant shade of rose by the setting sun.
The rest of the train ride was better than others I’ve taken. Didn’t pay attention to the time, so I don’t know exactly how much sleep I got. Sometime around two we passed through a massive thunderstorm; I wondered if I was dreaming when I saw the lightning flashes.
At 6:35 we pulled into Gare Austerlitz in Paris under a sky gray with the sunrise.
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