Portal

An arch, a river, an afternoon...

There are days when the world can recreate you, if you will let that happen.

We had been travelling for weeks, with no set plan - just making it up as each day came - driving generally Southward from Paris and avoiding all highways. This was slow travel - sometimes delicious, but always subject to change without notice.

We had both been unwell. We were tired. My passion for the narrowest, twistiest, most ridiculous back roads had become perhaps a little forced, a little tedious. There is a sense in which I had not wanted to admit that to myself, and Meg was far too tolerant to say.

Coming at last to the limestone country of the Ardèche the deep gorges focused the light and the heat. We found a place to stay and wilted for a day or two - venturing out to the nearest village to buy food then retreating into ourselves. I think we almost had an argument, which almost never happens, but I couldn’t tell you what it was about because it was nothing worth arguing over, let alone remembering - it never is.

Then, on the third day, we decided at last to visit the Pont d’Arc.

And this is how it was……

Late afternoon as the sun sinks and the last light seeps into the honeycombed stone, teasing out the colours of dove grey, cream, and a pale orange brown deepening almost to umber.

We enter the water, letting it lift us, support us, carry us ever so slowly downstream to the arch – an opening, an entrance, a doorway from one aspect of this day to another.

Immersed in the river, drifting, there is only breath, there is only water - no memory of what came before, no thought of what will come after.

All that weight of rock suspended above. All that freight of air framed. Sky, stone and water balanced, for all these uncounted years, and our small mass too slight by far to disturb that equilibrium.

And so we pass through, and hover, and then we return…

but not unchanged.

We will be here forever.