ROQUEFORT – MONT-DE-MARSAN
First you paint a cage
With it’s door open
Then paint
Something nice
Something simple
Something lovely
Something useful
For the bird……..
Jaques Prévert
Les Landes with 2.5 million acres of forest was a long stretch for me too to walk through. I started to memorize the last poem I had taken with me, the poem of Jaques Prévert “ To Paint a Picture of a Bird (Poure faire le portrait d’un oiseau).
After hours of walking on former railroad tracks, I reached the village of Bostens, where I entered the church. A recording of Verdi’s Ave Maria was starting to play. The music went right into my heart. The many hours of solitude had made me very receptive.
In the village of Gaillères, I had lunch in the Restaurant “Au Coeur des Landes.” I enjoyed the French cuisine and had for the first time a dessert called “Gateau Basque”, a cake typical for the Basque country. It showed me that I was coming closer to the Spanish border.
In the town of Bougues, I met the German biker Michael. He planned to stay overnight in the same refuge in the town Mont-de-Marsan, six miles away from Bougues. He promised to tell the hospitaliér that I was for sure coming.
During the last hours to the town of Mont-de-Marsan, I started to recite the Heart Sutra and forgot the burning feet and all the other aches from walking miles and miles on the hard asphalt.
Thanks to Michael, the hospitaliér did wait for me and showed me the room where I could stay. It was a very nice place. I bought the dinner in a boulangerie close by. When I entered the bakery, the space was filled with the soft sound of hundreds of humming bees. They discovered the sweetness of the cakes and where crawling all over cookies and cakes. Nobody seemed to care.
