October Snow
Memories and meteorological phenomena, originally written in October 2020 and published on my website.
In October 2021, I was living in the Basque country and working at the local tourism office. It was my first time really living in a place where I was surrounded by nature. It was at that point the longest amount of time I had ever spent in my "fatherland". And I was every day confronted with magic, that of the deep roots and changing leaves all around me.
I wonder if in October 100 years ago, the people living here would have been so shocked at the snow in the mountains.
Today it feels like a package, for which you didn't pay expedited shipping, arriving the day after you order it. I go out for lunch to a restaurant whose back terrace looks out over the lower part of the village, eye-line a straight shot to the purple shapes cut with white on the horizon. Everyone, even those old men sitting across from me, is talking about the snow.
"And there certainly wasn't any snow last Wednesday," one says. "I was up in Irati forest, to hear the bellows of the red deer stags."
"Who'd you go with?"
"My wife. You know, it was still summer then. We brought a picnic."
Last Thursday, a cloud descended on our valley, swaddled snugly by our circle of mountains, opaque and so gray and windy that we guessed it must be snowing up there. Neither snow, nor even rain, descended upon the valley, during the days. Some ancient enchantment turns the rain on only during nighttime in the fall: keeps our fields green, but never muddy; our snails and frogs happy, but never drowned. The nocturnal rain abated early enough that my neighbor could step out at dawn to the backwoods, seeking mushrooms he was sure (and was right) would finally come with the humidity.
And then the cloud lifted.
The mountaintops emerged as I drove to work with my dad this morning, cutting through the morning mist to meet this sight. Unlike an autumn raincloud, this gossamer shroud hangs low over the valley—casting daybreak in golden-green light as it melts—and portends a bluebird day.
I can almost smell the snow as I finish my lunch, as I finish my work, as I pack up my things and meet my dad in the parking lot. "A woman in my Basque class is a shepherd-in-training," says my dad as he pulls up in the car. My hiking boots were already in the trunk, packed on the advice of my telephonic weather oracle. Both the mist and Météo-France promised sunshine. "She says there's snow above 2000m. Let's go up the valley." Orientation here has nothing to do with North and South; up is literal, meaning elevation, and happens to correspond to a slightly-west-leaning South, as the crow flies.
We drive towards the mountains on windy roads that take us up, there, to those blue things in the distance. They are so much more easily accessible now than when my many-greats grandfather left this valley. He would not have known these roads, which were first carved and paved by shepherds in post-war cars. Would he have been thrilled by October snow?
On our way to La Pierre Saint-Martin, I number seven shepherd's cabins and lose count of the sheepfolds. The evening light softens the horizon behind us and a gray light descends upon the eastside mountainside looming over us.
Shepherds come to live here in the summer. Eschewing rooftop bars and air-miles, they make cheese and weather epic storms, as shepherds have always done. But they will be gone within a few weeks. They do not stay for winter, which I guess has now begun. They'll be walking down with the sheep soon, down into the ever-green valley. This limestone landscape is rife with small cracks leading to deep holes, which hide under the snow like predators wearing a sheep's skin. They say the great serpent Herensuge sleeps deep below these mountains whose treacheries are of his own design, forged by his flames. Few even hike here in winter, except the most-dedicated few who spend the summer mapping and memorizing the karst-rock terrain.
Even here, at the foot of towering mountains, in a country of small villages and knee-deep in sheep pastures, so many things are hidden under snow and cloud, behind shrubbery and mist, blending into mossy stones and kaleidoscope leaves. These hidden things beckon all of us towards them.
As we drive towards 2000m, I read the car thermostat to gauge how far along we are. Every 100m up, the temperature falls 1 degree Celsius.
1 degree away from 2000m, the canine tip of the Pic d'Anie begins to bite the sky above us. The skirts of the mountain, carved by a glacier's deft hand, spill out pink and orange. Face to the sun, the bare gray rock has caught flame. Behind us, the mountains are blue, deepest indigo, in high relief with the iridescent sunset, which looks not unlike dragon lungs.
And yet, brightest among these things is the snow.
