Fritz Photography

Dry stone architecture is about as old as mankind. Anywhere stone is abundant, people have built habitations with it for mellenia. It’s common the world over.

But to be able to drive down the road (or dirt path), and see these abandoned structures through the brush is fascinating. And if you’re doing it at dusk, it’s downright spooky.

The hillsides around Gordes are covered in scrubby, rocky terrain, with olive and oak trees and underbrush. Almost everywhere you turn you see dry stone walls, some newer, most old and decrepit, marking off ancient boundary lines, sheep pens, paths, and more. And if you look long enough, you begin to see structures–some standing (and some impressively large), some partially collapsed, some piles of rubble.

My curiosity piqued by my own explorations at dusk and dawn, I went to the local Bories Village. In the early 1970s, this old village, abandoned at the beginning of the 19th century, was restored. Most tourist attractions in the world focus on historic locations originally reserved for the rich and powerful: palaces, mansions, grand cathedrals, political buildings, etc. This one focuses on the hardscrabble life of the common rural villager, and attracts 100,000 visitors a year. (And the odd thing is: with no souvenir shop, you can’t buy a thing there.)

There isn’t a lot of information about what life was like for the inhabitants of these huts, save for a few household and farming implements. But you can gather a lot from observation: the soot and creosote coating the interior walls of the houses indicate a lot of smoke, coughing, and lung cancer.  Even in the hot sunshine, the interior of the buildings was very cool (and some were damp with ground seepage), so it must have been freezing in the winter, especially with the howling Mistral winds. They probably had a lot of welts on their heads from bumping them on the low doorways, and a lot of bruised or crushed fingers from laying so much stone.

As much as the silent history enclosed within these ubiquitous walls and structures, I was fascinated by their shape, the inward curve of the walls, the rugged poetry of their lines, the indelible weight of time.

A wierd photo, you say? Well, thank you very much. Isn’t the moon and sky beautiful? And the light on the metal shopping carts? I couldn’t pass it up, in the parking lot of a Super U. Don’t ever expect to be able to shop for anything past 8pm in France. Most places close even earlier.

This is Gordes, the hill town just up the road from where we are staying. It is listed as one of the most beautiful places in France by someone or other, and they weren’t lying. It’s pretty impressive. My favorite parts are where you can see the remains of the rear walls of old homes, carved out of the sandstone. I love to explore.

A stone wall and gite. The stone walls here are almost as impressive as in the Yorkshire Dales. (The Yorkshire Dales? Enough about the Dales already!)

A borie (actually a replica). These abound in the hills where we are staying, and visited at night by moonlight are fascinating and spooky. I hope to explore more; you can read about them here.

The pool and garden at our little hotel.

And another strange image from our hotel.

Some images from the walled city of Carcasonne, France.

It seemed pretty odd to me that this kid, sitting in an oversized wheelchair, would be intentionally sticking his head into a plastic bag. Had his parents never taught him to never stick his head into a plastic bag for fear of suffocating? Was he suicidal? That’s how it appeared. Until I noticed a little later that inside the bag is a 2 liter bottle of soda pop.

A self-portrait in Languedoc, south France, with the Pyrenees behind me.