An Atom of Time

Walnuts, Chestnuts, Truffles, Goose, Foie Gras and Wine - the local foods of the Dordogne-Perigord. Though hiking 8-14 miles a day, staying in each village one night and moving on, this was clearly not a trip of privation.

Walking through the pastoral countryside it is easy to forget the history of the place. But unlike the natural rock overhangs used for millenia as shelter, the square windows cut into the rocks above the river were made not by nature, but by man seeking shelter from the man-made storm called War.

In Font de Gaume cave we saw amazingly gorgeous authentic 17,000 year old paintings of Mammoth and Bison. These animals were lively and 3-dimensional, with depth to their legs and perspective techniques not seen again until the Renaissance! The lines are smooth and gestural resulting from one perfect sweep of thought and image. They are clearly the work of brilliant and talented artists. People never lived in the caves, but rather outside of them, under rocky overhangs. The artists used a stone lamp with a hollowed out center, a vegetal wick and animal tallow for flickering light. They had to imagine their paintings, prepare their manganese and iron oxide outside the cave and hike, or in some cases crawl, into the caves to produce these works.

Ruffignac, another authentic cave, is known both for its paintings and for its finger engravings. This is a much larger cave than Font de Gaume. The horse is approximately life size and drawn on the ceiling. The brilliant and crazy thing about this is that the space it was created in was very shallow and the artist had to crawl in, lie on his or her back and draw without being able to see the entire animal at one time, and it is Still perfect! The area has since been excavated down so we are able to stand comfortably and view these gorgeous works.

Standing in Abri Pataud, a rock shelter in Les Eyzies, France, the chasm of history was crushed to an atom of time. People lived here 35,000 to 20,000 years ago. 35,000 years ago. Say it out loud and marvel!

So much more to tell about (and show pictures of), but that will have to wait for another time.

I will end this entry here: Returning home to Chicago, the woman exiting the plane in front of me wore a very chic full-length coat constructed of squared rabbit hides sewn together in a patchwork. In a moment I was transported back to Les Eyzies. There I saw sewing needles made of bone with the tiniest eye, capable of sewing the finest sinew and grass, binding hides punched with bone awls.I swear I saw a white light and heard a vast whooshing sound inside my head as time spun.