Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Castles, history and hounds (Epic honeymoon part 3)




La Roque Gageac upstream of Domme
Troglodyte village in cliffs above La Roque Gageac
Growing up on Midwest plains did much for my work ethic but little for my sense of geography and history past the mid 19th century. My family came west in the late 1800’s from Northern Europe and the oldest relic I can point to is an aged tintype and what is left of the family homestead that was built at the turn of the twentieth century. Most Americans have little since of history and who can blame us; we tear down the “old” and build new whenever we get the chance. Blocks of disposable subdivisions all set in the neatest grid one can imagine. Upon announcing that we were headed to walled villages and ancient fortresses, the response was “With those funny narrow streets.” Yes, we were in search of narrow streets where Americans can barely waddle through let alone drive our behemoth automobiles. Even so they were much wider than places in Morocco’s ancient medinas where houses come so close to that young lovers can kiss without leaving home. History in textbooks is valuable but no replacement for the 3-D experience of breathing it in, hiking the hills and setting foot where kings and troglodytes once stood side by side (although centuries apart). Even the famous English King Richard “The Lionheart” roamed this landscape (he didn’t speak English and only spent 6 months in Britain) and now it was our turn to stride through history. 

La Roque Gageac has been inhabited for 30 centuries in the limestone cliffs and along the Dordogne River
Entrance to Domme that once held the Knights Templers and still bares their cryptic inscriptions.

Stone streets of Domme
Our fist encounter was the walled fortress of Domme, which resides high on the hill above the Dordogne Valley. When I say American’s have no sense of history, it is because we have no physical reminders of how young our country is in a broader sense of the world. Domme’s main fortified entrance was once a prison for the Knight’s Templar after King Phillip IV reneged on his debt and used the fall back accusation of blasphemy against the order. This was 1307 and the walls still bear the inscriptions and secret codes that the Templers scribed into their cell while awaiting torture and trial for lending to the wrong guy. Eventually the pope excommunicated the whole order, and then pardoned those still alive once the debt was erased, and the remaining Templers were inducted in the Sovereign Military Hospilatier Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. Fascinating story and only one of many that shares the tiny streets that make up Domme’s thoroughfares. Shortly after the Knights Templar episode the Dordogne became the front line for the 100 Years War 1337-1445 between France and England, hence the castles on every strategic outcropping or river crossing. North shore was French territory and the south was held by England. Beynac was one such stronghold and was directly opposed by Castlenaud (they could see each other). Eventually the wily French bought the commander off and took the castle by financial storm. Beynac should be a bucket list item for anyone that loves history or just a good castle.  
View of the Dordogne Valley from Domme looking toward Beynac
Symmetry in Domme
Castle Beynac's ramparts above the village
Beynac lies just downstream from the former English castle of Castlenaud and is one of the most awe inspiring locations I’ve had the good fortune to visit. The main town lies directly on the Dordogne River and is only wide enough for one street and a row of houses before the village climbs the cliff toward the fortress of Castle Beynac. Stretch your calves out, the climb up is steep, but you will only stop at every turn to admire the stone houses, walls, streets, ramparts (everything including the roofs is stone here) in addition to the Dordogne Valley itself. Arriving at the castle is epic, as you know I don’t get excited about much, but I was running around and smiling like a six year old at Christmas morning. The interior is sparse, cold, and dark and feels like the lord of the manor has just stepped out on vacation. Tapestries dominate the walls and authentic furniture line the living quarters making the experience that of walking into the wrong century. For all of its grandeur and authentic plague ridden fortifications, it was a dog that dominated our visit. Unlike America, France loves its pets. From cafes to 4 star restaurants to castles, hounds abound. 

Approach to the Castle through Beynac
Village Beynac at night sans tourists hoards



























Castle Beynac with ramparts and archers emplacements
This particular hound was perfectly proportioned for a meeting in a 12th century castle it was a Leonburger that stood almost a meter at the shoulder. Bred to resemble the lion of the Leonburg crest in Germany it is the finest looking castle dog I’ve ever met. The owner’s friend spoke perfect English and we were allowed to meet the regal hound in the main hall of the castle and get a brief history of the breed. Unfortunately, the dog discovered we carried no snacks and the castle, fireplaces, kitchen wares, also contained no snacks and he lost interest in Beynac. I now want a castle just to justify owning one of these gigantic hounds, the wife agrees that we need a castle and more hounds. Hey, every winery needs a mascot. That night after a luxurious dinner where my apple pie was served on a piece of raw slate (yes it is a tough life) we journeyed back up the alleys and through the centuries of the now deserted village. We did most of our exploring after dark, when things quiet down and the lighting presents a much more vivid experience in these fabled places. Alleyways became hiding places for conspirators, assassins crept in obscured doorways, archers watched Castlenaud for invaders, history lurked in the shadows, enjoy the narrow alleyways and let your imagination fill the time between you and their builders.

Ancient lanterns hang in the caste with dim light now provided by electricity, swords are at the ready by the table.
Castle Beynac a bucket list must for travelers and history buffs. 

16th century canon at Castlenaud

Trebuchet at Castlenaud
The following morning we walked three kilometers to the opposing fortress of Castlenaud. After the lived in authentic feel of Beynac, Castlenaud felt very modern and unmoving. I recommend a visit to Castlenaud first as it is more of a museum of weaponry and siege fighting than how castle would feel like to visit in the 1300’s. Rare and unique weapons, including full size trebuchets and siege mortars make it a grand experience, but the lived in feel of Beynac was much more. There was even another leonburger at this castle, but plastered walls and no tapestries made it more of a recreation experience. Follow the rivers advice and visit downstream from Domme to Castlenaud and finally Beynac. After traveling a rather short distance by kayak we had followed the Dordogne and it eons of humanity from limestone cliffs and caves to medieval fortifications and now it was time to move on. 
Artillery sized crossbow with hand held models in the case













Siege mortar and full sized trebuchets complete with siege coverings. Standing where the siege machines are really put into perspective how close combat was then and how effective archers would be on the battlefield.













Saturday, October 15, 2011

Epic Journey Part Deux


I have had the good opportunity to travel over a good portion of this earth and have done most of it on a whim, a lets see what is over there approach. It was impossible to be late or to miss anything on the agenda and therefore a worry free approach. But, time has become ever so precious and my wanderings have become restricted as I’ve become part of the American dream. So this time I spent months researching and reading, pouring over maps and travel guides to make sure we wouldn’t miss a thing and know the last 30,000 years of history we were to trek through. But like life, travel is largely dictated by the unpredictable and even the best plans can be laid to waste in an instant. It is at that moment that you must decide what is more important, the plan or the experience?


Early Departure Colmar

On our way from Colmar to Brive La Gaillarde we had to change trains in Paris (a town I despised before this trip), which required us to drag our 120lbs of gear through the metro system. This is where our trip itinerary begins to derail and shows us how good of team we truly are. I manage to violate every travel rule I have and place all my money, ID and credit cards in the same wallet and then make a lovely target for some nice professional thief. Halfway between Paris Est and Paris Austerlitz, a pick-pocket gets me and now I’m broke and can’t prove whom I am, or that I’m in the country legally. We talk with police (who are polite enough not to laugh) and they say we can make our next train and file the report when we get to Brive, so we get lunch and continue on. We could have fought, or argued, or let it ruin our trip, but we didn’t. Instead of marriage counseling, I think each couple contemplating marriage should have to travel together in a foreign land to test compatibility. Trust me, you will know if you are going to deal with life’s up and downs together after missing few meals while running to catch trains. Arriving in Brive we check in to the first hotel we come across and quietly relax on the street side terrace and enjoy the peaceful sounds of funny French police sirens as they conduct a high-speed car chase around the city that ends just up the street from us. It is one of those surreal moments of why travel is so grand, even when things don’t go your way. 



Stone barn typical of the region near Veyrac
Our tiny tent in Veyrac, first night near the river
Planning travel has two sides, what is stated in guidebooks and forums and then what people state on the ground behind bulletproof glass. Our plan was to transfer to the remote Cele River from Brive, but the kind station attendant informed us this is impossible without a very expensive taxi ride or renting a car. We looked at the map and simply shifted our destination to the Upper Dordogne River and a village called Veyrac that we were originally going to skip and sent our travel plan up in smoke. Again, what is important, to have fun and see new things or fret over what didn’t happen? Holly (my wife) is much better at the latter than I am, and I finally took a page out of her book and accepted that we weren’t going to have the trip we planed, but would have the trip we were on. If there was ever a moment my wife had a reason to curse me, it was when we stepped off the train in Veyrac and were greeted by nothing but a closed rail station now occupied by an old woman and her laundry. So there we are with 120lbs of gear, in the beating sun and nothing around but an unmarked road, she loves me, she loves me not. I voted that we turn right and started down that road a couple hundred meters until Holly vetoed the direction and we turned around and finally came to a sign saying my wife was correct. We only had 2 kilometers to go until the campground, but the sign didn’t state the campground was closed for the season. So we trekked down to the closed campground utterly exhausted from hauling the gear in the sun, but saints be praised there is a taxi number and another open campground 4 kilometers down the same road. Our taxi dropped us off at our campground that happened to be located right on the Dordogne and even had a pool. We finally made it to the river, just not where we thought we’d be. Unfortunately there was nowhere to get dinner; even walking a couple miles looking for a place didn’t help. Well, we were truly off the beaten track and like most Americans could stand to miss a couple meals. Fortunately the campground had a fresh bread delivery in the morning so we could start our journey in proper French fashion with a croissant. 


Private chateau along the Dordogne
Over the summer at home in Alaska we had taken our Aire Super Lynx inflatable kayak out on numerous excursions, but hadn’t run any swift rivers with it yet. The Dordogne is a fairly lazy river but is punctuated by class II sections on the upper portion and the low water levels meant we had to thread many a tight spot just so we didn’t get stuck. Hats off to Aire on this design, we took a couple whitewater sections sideways and never came close to capsizing. Stress, trains, thieves, agendas, all started to melt away into the lush limestone valley. Large fish swam along us in gin clear water as sheer white cliffs sprang up vertically on every bank. We stopped at a roadside cafĂ© for lunch as were treated ourselves to a massive traditional three course Perigoird region lunch, fresh salad, fruit, foix grois, then roasted duck leg and potatoes roasted in duck fat, followed by goat cheese and bread. Rural France (most of France for that matter) operates without serve safe rules, so if you are squeamish about people handling your food with latex gloves—look away. Also, their hours of operation are 9is till noonish, then around 2 till maybe 6 or 7. Unlike us, I believe the French rule the clock; the clock doesn’t seem to dictate their life and what a life it is. Enjoy, relax, talk with everyone, and don’t worry about the cat in the dining room or the dogs lying under every table. We happily adapted to the French countryside and since our schedule was shot anyway, we resolved to paddle as much as we wanted, and carry our own picnic pack (ham, cheese, baguettes, Bordeaux, chocolate, etc) so that we could observe the strict code of not carrying what time it was and enjoy the countryside.
Our Aire Super Lynx and all our gear we carried from Alaska



A gift left for a friend in St. Sozy.
We arrived in St. Sozy in the early afternoon to find the campground all but deserted as mid September is closing time for most tourist locations along the Dordogne, but any inconvenience was easily out weighed by the absence of the crowds. We had the river to ourselves most days, and become perturbed if we had to share our section with another canoe and interrupt our daydreams. St. Sozy is an idyllic sleepy village nestled in the foothills along the Dordogne River. It’s not a town in guidebooks, and doesn’t have castles and grand cathedrals, but was one of the most charming villages we visited. Unlike the tourist traps, it was lived in; all the 400-year-old stone homes had stone and tile roofs along with the trappings of modern life. We awoke to a cold morning and a heavy fog on the river that added to the feeling of being in a timeless land that has seen people wander for the last 40,000 years. Quiet, unhurried, this was the France that we had come for, also the campground hosts had fresh bread and coffee ready for us, as we were the only guests for breakfast staff outnumbered us by 2 to 1, not bad for $30(campsite and breakfast for two). 


Cathedral in St. Sozy

It felt like reaching back in time on the upper Dordogne River.

Limestone cliffs shine during twilight down river from St. Sozy

Doing laundry on the paddles at Soleil Plage Campground
Exploring caves
  We let the fog clear and continued on with our picnic pack full and our itinerary wide open. The river was wide and clear with fish and more shear limestone walls riddled with caves rising on both banks. This was the Dordogne of legend the place that inspired some of the first artwork man has ever created. We lunched on large limestone outcropping in the river polished smooth by the eons of water rushing over it. This day was worth it, all the stress and headaches, this was why we came to France, to bask in the sun and explore a land that has 30 centuries of history hiding around each luscious bend in the river. We made it to Soulliac and enjoyed a nice night out in the historic city center, and replenished our picnic pack for another day. Our next leg on the river was more reminiscent of paddling through Minnesota than prehistoric canyons. The sheer limestone cliffs gave way to gentle rolling hills and farmland.  Our swift Dordogne was replaced by almost still water for long stretches. 
Boats being built above the Dordogne in caves just as they have been done for thousands of years.
Due to lack of signage we missed our intended stop of Lacave so we paddled on until coming to an oasis in the backcountry. Soleil Plage campground is a 4 star campground complete with water-park and fine dining. It’s a tough life but somebody has to do it. From now on we were in the land of Castles on the Dordogne, during the 100 years war between England and France this was the front line. Each river crossing was battled for and subsequently had a castle defending it on each side of the river. 

Chateau de Montfort is a private residence built in 1214 but has been destroyed and rebuilt at least 4 times since then.



Friday, October 7, 2011

The Man I knew

I knew a great big man once, they say he stood at almost 5'8" in his prime and if you weren't careful he'd put that giant size 8 boot to use on you. No one I knew dared to challenge this man, even when he was well past his prime. He didn't walk on the water, or see the future, or claim to talk to the almighty himself. But, he did know the score in life and that seemed to be all that mattered. He knew life and death and what a hard time truly was and the whole time I knew him, he never complained.
Les, Eldora, Ron and Larry (youngest my father) Hayes in front of the house on Elm St. he built.

Well, once after his second open heart surgery he told the doc that the drugs were so good his thumb didn't hurt for the first time in twenty years and it would be great if could get some more or if the doc would just cut his thumb off. This was the man I knew, the one kicked off the family farm at 15 during the depression because they couldn't feed all the kids. He was the eldest and had to make his own way in life from now on. The one that landed in Marseilles in 1944, and lived to come home and run a street crew for the next 30 years.
3rd Platoon, 2nd Regiment CRTC  Cpl. Garner and Cpl. McPherson 5-13-1944. My grandfathers platoon before shipping out to France.
This man was my father's father, Lester Melvin Hayes, Sgt. Hayes, Les, and I'm sure some unflattering names were also used to reference him. I recently visited the Alsace region of France and the battlefields my grandfather and the men above knew all to well, many of them never returned from those fields. Those that had first hand accounts of that event are fading rapidly into history much like photographs. Which posed the question, "Who was the man that I had known?"
Sgt. Hayes on the left, Sgt Katzensky on the right both in the 63rd Division
The man I knew, was Les or Grandpa, and was patient, kind and generous. He did much for us grand kids in the way of teaching us life's lessons and what it meant to pull your weight. It was never a "when I was your age" scolding, he didn't have to, we all knew what he did and didn't need reminding. But who was the man that his kids knew? That his battle buddies like Katzensky knew? The teenager kicked out of his house, who his parents knew?
Sgt. Lester Hayes, unknown village in Europe spring of 1945.
Maybe it's better that the man I knew was the only version I'd known, it is easier that way. We know our hero's have flaws, they are only human after all, but not having to see them first hand is always easier. I was fortunate to have grown up in this giant's shadow and have known the man that learned life's cruel lessons and survived them all. He only strove to make sure his grandchildren never knew his hunger or lack of education that plague his early years.
Gordon Hawks, Sylvia Hawks, Melvin Hawks, Donald Hawks, Lester Hayes circa 1945. All my Family.
I was raised around giants, some gentle, some not, but we all knew what they survived through when many of their compatriots did not. Maybe some were gentle once and life made them hard, or hard once and survival softened their hard edges after all those years. Those in my family heard the guns of war, from the Pacific to Europe and though they survived the war they are mostly gone now. Les heard his final shots in April of 2003 when they folded the flag on his coffin. I know the crowd around him that day all knew a different version of the same man, but the man I knew wasn't buried that day. They couldn't dig a hole big enough to hold him.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Moose Camp

Adam Messmer, only hunt with this man if you want to be successful or need a tracker in heavy cover.
I have become rather addicted to large format photography and especially using the mighty Graflex Speed Graphic 4"x5" press camera. It is a camera that demands patience from beginning to end and rewards users with a unique bevy of qualities and possibilities. It's main attribute is the focal plane shutter that allows users to put about any lens on it that you wish. Many great lenses from the 1800's and early 1900's lack internal shutters so this allows users to draw from almost any lens they can afford and make a lens board for.
My last project "Titans of Industry" utilized the Kodak Aero Ektar 7" f2.5 that is a challenge to use, but well worth the challenge. My next project is to embark on learning how to shoot tintype or ferrotype images using the Speed Graphic. Tintype or Ferrotype are images that use painted metal coated with a special emulsion that makes them light sensitive much like a modern negative. This was the industry standard during the late 1800's and most images were created on either tin or glass negatives. Why step backwards, when technology is so rapidly going forward? I love hands on projects and photography is more to me that just clicking a shutter and paying someone to edit it and email a finished product.
But before I learn tintype, I need to learn the lenses of the era and had an opportunity to do just that during our recent fall outing to Chena, Alaska during moose season. I purchased an ancient Petzval style brass lens from the east coast that arrived just in time for moose season. So in addition to the standard moose camp equipment, I packed a pelican case full of large format equipment older than my father.

Bill Messmer inspecting the moose hanging in our outdoor meat locker.

Lucas (middle), Adam (left), Bill (Right) 2 second exposure by camp fire.

My moose camp partners were willing to pose for a few frames (after we filled two tags in three days). I know people may look at the image and think that they could do that with a lens baby, or just photoshop and it may be somewhat true, but I'll stick with a photo process that is authentic as my partners in moose camp.
Near Denali National Park


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