Past cables

It looks more like a stick than a cable in this photo, but this end is located just at the entry of the village.

This looks like an ordinary cable, but at one point, it crossed this valley:

Somewhere far on the other side of the trees, where the mountains start to rise up again, the cable ends.  Just a few generations ago, men crossed the valley using this cable.  I don’t know if they zip lined across or had some cart that toggled along, but the cable used to hang hundreds of feet above ground.  The villagers would cross the valley so they could cut trees down in the forest unnoticed.  Then, they would burn the wood, smothering it to created wood charcoal, and sell it to the inhabitants of the plain.  The plain is only 15 miles away, but at that time, it was a different world.

Nowadays, most of the cable is buried in the ground, but Christophe followed it a few years ago.  Where it ended, the trees were younger than the surrounding forest, and he found a giant, blackened cauldron, which was most likely used to burn the tress.  A neighbor has the lid; which must be a story in itself as how something so big made its way back to the village.

It’s just a small reminder of the village’s history. It’s over 600 years old, and while some of its past has been unearthed, I’m betting most of it is still undiscovered.