A Liner on the Great Green
|
|
A Liner on the Great Green |
|
The liner! That’s what I’ll call the delightful holiday home that was once the Hôtel Ranc or Hôtel du Parc, a ship docked: gangways, deck, crew cabins, engine rooms, and high-sea kitchens. A white house saved from the waters by a generous gold prospector: Philippe Papadimitriou. He is the captain of this beautiful home, the Master of keys and hatches, a Greco-Belgian giant who pilots, builds, cooks, and holds onto visitors he'd love to keep a few days longer in Lozère.
L'Etoile is a guesthouse that sails peacefully just a stone’s throw from the great green, from those oceans of nature crossed by Belgian or Flemish pilgrims, with whom we share tonight's guest table. You don’t meet here without sharing a part of your dreams. And it is always at the captain's table where we are perpetually invited. A prolonged invitation because it’s a passage of friendship: what links us to the place and to those we meet again here...
I came with Eric Poindron following in the footsteps of his journey in Lozère, following the tracks of Robert Louis Stevenson and his admirable detours. Friendly detours where one takes the time to know each other, where encounters are savored and cultivated. The passage of friendship that Eric offers us and Philippe relays is also a sharing of images, of distant paths we cross before the vibrant soul of the liner, the grand hall where the captain’s laughter and songs stretch on between two delicious pears.
Here, I discover Sergio and his adventures from the ends of the earth, Sergio, a figure of a shaman with a big heart, a doctor of seduction who also navigates the Cévennes aboard his truck-caravan.
Before bringing the piano to life again, Philippe picks up the guitar, just like in the books, like in Eric’s Belles Etoiles, where everything that was once written comes to life before my eyes. There is in this guesthouse a touch of magic that nourishes. A fugue and the digestion of a gargantuan meal (one would come back just for this gratin dauphinois worthy of the best guest tables): after the meal, we approach the night and disembark in the silent forest of the monks of Notre-Dame des Neiges on the Ardèche side. (Realizing that the pear came before the walk, I acknowledge my reversal of events, but the order of memories hardly matters, no frame holds, memory ventures into the meanders of other forests just as enigmatic and remains, in the end, only a succession of encounters and miraculous moments).
A stop in the forest, four men and a dog—Billy—listen to the silence a short walk from L'Etoile, a few meters from a monastic circle that distills in its cellars the excellent aperitif "Quineige vin tonique" crafted by the hardworking monks. We listen to the night, evoking the Beast of Gévaudan from Lozère, imagining in the thick forest the shadows of the place's ghosts. But it’s not at the guesthouse that the ghosts will keep us from sleeping, neither the monster's nor those of the wealthy families from the early century—women and children—sent here to leave the head of the family in peace on the Côte d'Azur, sent here to do nothing; except walk, listen to the murmur of the Allier, sleep in the garden at nap time, and watch the trains pass by.
One could hardly dream of anything better, and we too are tempted to extend these two modest days that seem to have begun long ago. The grace of the encounter and friendly well-being. We must leave, but you know, Philippe, that we are doomed to return. A beautiful prophecy, this "one always comes back to L'Etoile," and a sweet condemnation to come, to return.
About Belles Etoiles by Eric Poindron: Losing one’s way or gaining the time to lose time—that is truly the aim of the true traveler, perhaps unwittingly taught by a young Robert Louis Stevenson, who crossed behind his donkey, Modestine, the misty Lozère of a gray autumn.
One fine day, Eric—the peddler-pilgrim-publisher-chronicler-writer—finally decides to follow Stevenson’s footsteps. Well, more or less, because in the nuance and the deviation lies the true encounter. The ingratitude of endless ascents and the October rains will quickly be compensated by a magnificent series of encounters that Eric Poindron sublimates, maintains, and revives whenever he has the chance to return to the places of this long pilgrimage. Feet in the water or disenchanted trout, nothing will hold back the friendly momentum of this benevolent giant, who, with the rugby-like roundness of a face that matches the robust walker’s stride, loves to connect, share, introduce, and create around him a world of friends gathered by the journey, the adventure of the lost or rediscovered path, secret but not too much, and the sharing of good times around a well-stocked guest table.
Eric Poindron on the trail of Stevenson, and I, or perhaps someone else masked, on the trail of Eric Poindron, with him and the unknown knowns or the “known in their village, their street, or their building,” as Chris would so beautifully say, who love life above all. The time to take time, that’s life, the immediate smile of an impending encounter, that’s life, the terrine of fricandeaux with herbs, that’s life, the local wine and the Chaoui laughter too.
To not remain too distant from this waking dream, the best is to read Eric Poindron, his book that is savored like a ripe melon, like a pear, like a well-seasoned sausage from the kindly namesake, like the amused gaze of a seductive shaman. Go, leap from chapter to chapter, go back to lose yourself among the ghosts, feel with the palms of your hands the imaginary walls of standing stones, feel the moss and the wind, the departure toward the light of a miraculous early summer. Gulliver Collection, directed by Michel Le Bris. Flammarion. by David Collin
Former resort hotel with a garden on the banks of the Allier River, L'Etoile Guesthouse is located in La Bastide-Puylaurent, between Lozère, Ardèche, and the Cévennes in the mountains of southern France. At the crossroads of the GR®7, GR®70 Stevenson Trail, GR®72, GR®700 Regordane Way (St Gilles), GR®470 Sources and Gorges of the Allier, GRP® Cévenol, Montagne Ardéchoise, Margeride, and many day loop hikes. Ideal for a relaxing and hiking stay.
Copyright©etoile.fr