Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
28 Juillet 1021, Pâturage de vaches près de Saint Alphonse
Ma chère Mme Archer,
I write to you from the desk in your lovely caravan, floating most gracefully above a herd of les vaches dangereuses—the cows, I believe you would call them.
The cows, which are of the most unfriendly, are surrounding a low outcropping of stone on which the farmer has set a block of salt. The outcropping of stone is, naturallement, one of your ley nodes. At least, we believe it to be so, for we have been quite unable to draw close to it. We are therefore waiting for the farmer to move them to another field, which he has told us he is quite willing to do.
This is not the first time we have had to do with les vaches on this expedition. We have been most zealous to follow the ley lines to perfection, and when one must travel in a straight line one cannot follow the roads, n’est-ce pas? We have therefore crossed gardens, rooftops, ponds, les bosquets, et bien sûr les pâturages.
Les pâturages des vaches dangereuses.
One knows one must avoid les taureaux, the bulls, for they are tres formidable. But I had understood the cows to be placid. So they should be, to be milked twice a day, n’est-ce pas? And yet these, they are not.
I begin to think it a matter of personal dislike. Perhaps ma mère once insulted a cow, then a mere calf but later the matriarch of a clan that has since spread throughout the region northwest of Toulouse, a clan bent on the despite of the family Bergeron? Who can say?
All of this is to say that Dr. Peyronnet—et moi, aussi—would be most delighted if you could devise a method of detecting the ley lines from perhaps, let us say, ten feet above le pâturage? And twenty feet would be le plus excellent.
I will not say that you owe me a new pair of trousers. I should have watched where I stepped.
Now that you have heard my cri de coeur, I shall relate our progress. The farmer is most dilatory.
Two months ago we left from the statue of King Guy, following the ley line toward the northwest, and then from node to node. We are now at the fourth node from King Guy’s Fundament, as you refer to it, and I may say, leaving les vaches dangereuses to the side, that it has been a trip of the most wonderful. It has been eye-opening even for Dr. Peyronnet!
My task, as you know, is to study the many communautés de plantes along our route: to see how each species works with—or against!—the others, and how we might, by use of le Fleuve de Vollant, encourage or discourage them.
The usual course, says Dr. Peyronnet, who has made many of these excursions, is to go out and find some lush spot, with some ground cover, but not too much, and at least a few trees for respite from the sun, and take a good look around, and at noon sit under a tree and have one’s déjeuner.
But we have been quite unable to do this, he and I, for we must follow the ley lines. We went swiftly the first few days, making only rare stops, as Dr. Peyronnet pulled his beard at the many likely spots he spied two or three hundred yards to the right or left of our path. He was, how would you say, enclin à être grincheux.
And then as we passed over a most desolate spot, all rocks and stones, with here and there a clump of weeds, Dr. Peyronnet cried, “Arrêt! We are to examine les plantes; here there are les plantes; and so shall we do.” I fear I was slow in leaving the caravan, and Dr. Peyronnet said, “Have no fear, young Claude. The sun, it is hot; but the caravan will be shade enough.” And so I positioned the caravan about six feet over an unlikely clump of weeds, burned brown by the sun, and descended by your most useful ladder; and we examined the small communautés de plantes beneath it.
And it was, I must say, la révélation. For there were more varieties of weed than one would think, even in that small patch of shadow—and moreover, plants that no student of Dr. Peyronnet had ever described!
Since then we have stopped at least once each time there has been a change in les verdure; and in the last month we have begun to pay close attention to the borders where one communauté abuts another—where the two coexist, easily or uneasily as the case may be.
Dr. Peyronnet is ecstatic. He has now said to me many times, “Before, I saw what I wished to see. Now, now, I see what is there.” He has begged to convey to you his most urgent thanks.
I have included notes on our path, marked on a (I fear poor) copy of the chart you gave me, indicating the location of the nodes and the directions of the ley lines that extend from them.
I do not know when we shall return to L’École; Dr. Peyronnet says that the weather must decide.
Amicalement, and with many thanks for the use of your caravan,
Claude Bergeron
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Photo by Stijn te Strake on Unsplash
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