I was looking through the map of France in preparation for our summer trip when I happened upong the Viaduct of Gabarit in the Cantal region. I thought of my mother.
She is the explorer among us, the one who drags us out of the family lair to go see the procession of the saintly blood in Bruge, the JungFrau in Switzerland, the pyramids of Egypt, the prehistoric grottos of Lascaux, the swamps of Camargues, every cathedral on the map, every chateau in the Loire Valley, and the Viaduct of Gabarit. Twice.
It takes a blend of extraordinary curiosity and faith in human ingenuity to want to travel several hours to see a bridge. To this day, I cannot fully understand what possessed my mom to declare we should spend the day travelling across the Cantal mountains to see it. Or why we had to do it all over again the following year. She was the family travel agent. We did not argue with her.
I remember how the four of us and the family dog piled in the blue Ford Station wagon with enough snacks to sustain us through the trip. My mother would have read to us from whatever guidebook she'd checked from the library, and must have inserted a surprise stops at a prehistoric monolith or a romanesque church. We stopped by the side of the road and took our picture with the Viaduct as background. There must have been a small lecture on the art of bridge suspension.
This upcoming trip will be about medieval history.
- 'Stan wants to visit the sites of the Cathars," I told my mom during our weekly phone conversation.
- 'They're not far from here, between Narbonnes and Carcassone. That's a lovely region.'
- 'He wants to see Montsegur.'
- 'And Puylaurens, Foix, Lastours. We can do the whole thing. He should see Carcassone too. And we should show him Pezenas too.'
I could tell she was already working on our itinerary. I'm just praying we won't have to stop for bridges.