When I last wrote here, the world was lighter. It was the start of my life in France and the culmination of an incomparable vintage. Today, blood cakes on stadium floors, bombs fall on Al-Raqqah, and the guilty are hunted with all the hunger of revenge. We do not live in a safe world. We do not live in a just world. But I have to believe we still live in a beautiful world. The grapes we sorted now age in oak, November fog coats Burgundy in quiet, and on the autoroute to Grenoble, the engine of the car I still haven’t totaled drowns out my thoughts.
I hike Mont Rachais, the southernmost peak of the Chartreuse range, atop which sits La Bastille, a fortress built to defend France from Savoy. Finished in 1848, it never saw battle; France annexed Savoy in 1860, rendering La Bastille a useless building on a very large rock. I wonder (again) how we defend against today’s foes—foes without borders, without self-preservation, without humanity. The French Prealps loom over the red-tiled roofs of Grenoble. There is solace in the air of these mountains. It is a solace that won’t last long.
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