Roman Roads

This, on Roman roads in the Alps.

Though the Great Saint Bernard Pass might seem cut off from the world, especially when the clouds and snow move in again and the familiar figures of the roofers have come down at the end of the day, the roads all crossed here:  Neolithic,Celtic, Roman, Medieval, Napoleonic.  Everyone came building roads.

     The Veragri and Salassi, the ancient tribes of the region, made paths and came to worship their god of the mountains, appropriately called the "most high," at the summit of the Pass.  The famous Roman road-builders came through laying their measured miles of stone, and with them Claudius Caesar, out to conquor Britain and all Gaul.  Charlemagne came on his own road, and on it too Pope Stephen crossed, from the Lombard kingdom into the kingdom of the Franks.  Two hundred years ago last summer Napoleon mounted the Pass with 40,000 troops on the way to the battle of Marengo, with heavy ornate cannons hauled behind on sleds, along a road built to accommodate them.  (Stendhal, at seventeen, was one of the 40,000.  He wrote dismissively of the crossing in a letter to his sister from Milan afterwards, but by the time he wrote his autobiography, Mont Saint-Bernard had acquired a more Romantic stature in the narrative of his life, and become a "great feat."  Charles Dickens wrote of crossing the Pass as well, and described the hospice and morgue, in a chapter of Little Dorritt; and in J.M.W. Turner's Swiss sketchbooks you find drawings of the monastery.)

         Long after came the modern highway, bringing the bright red tour busses which blossom by day like Alpine poppies and vanish again at nightfall; closed by snow seven months of the year.  And hiking trails too ascend the mountains to clouded Alpine lakes and Roman marble quarries; plummet down to villages in Switzerland or Italy—the route the seventeen-year-old American pilgrim is taking tomorrow morning, walking from Brussels to Rome in her brown cloak in constant prayer against her sister's cancer.

         The bedrock is a cicatrix of half-remembered roads.  But I'm fooled by what look like endless paths, in a picture I've taken, criss-crossing the summer stone.  Too many paths to count.  I'm told when I wonder at their number that I'm looking at the scars of avalanches.  These, too, look like ways down from the mountains.

(From my creative nonfiction piece, Crossroads of the Alps, The World & I, September 2001)

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, At the Temple of Jupiter

The Long and Winding Road

Most famous, perhaps, is the long and winding road . . .

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I've seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to you door

The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day
Why leave me standing here?
Let me know the way

Many times I've been alone
And many times I've cried
Anyway you'll never know
The many ways I've tried

And still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Don't leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Don't keep me waiting here
Lead me to your door

—Paul McCartney, John Lennon

image:   Porto Moniz, Madeira, Leo-setä

On the Road

Embarking on a road trip, I am taken with the idea of road as metaphor, as powerful symbol in our psyche, popular culture, identity (romantic or otherwise).

There are roads, and there are roads.  Each is what we make of it.  As Jane Hirschfield writes (talking about moments of decision, which journeys are full of)— 

As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.

I'll be playing around with roads this week, and wherever they lead.

image:  Batumi (Georgia), country road, Ephraim Stillberg

Balloon Festival

It's been the balloon festival in Albuquerque this week.  Reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in Remarque's Heaven Has No Favorites, or at least the movie version (Bobby Deerfield) with Al Pacino and Marthe Keller.

I'm reminded also of the parachutes drifting over Mont Blanc which I saw in 1999.

image:  Albuquerque International Balloon Festival

Friday Calm

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

(Henry David Thoreau)

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Grasses

Fall Colors

Boat abandoned in the dunes, Provincetown, Cape Cod.  The paint is remarkable fresh.  And such a quintessential red—by no means the red of abandonment.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Cape Cod Boat

Places I Would Rather Be

D.H. Lawrence Ranch, Taos

image:  Christie B. Cochrell

Color of the Day

Raspberry (if there were any doubt)!

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Berries

Fall Colors

It's the time of year for pumpkins, squashes, gourds, in all their earthy finery.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell

Thought for the Day

Sometimes there are no tamales.

image:  Tamales en una bolsa, Renee Johnson