Welcome to MaY MEMOIR!
Day 8
For the entire month of May, I'll be sharing part of each chapter from my memoir, Ca va? Stories from Rural Life in Southern France.
Chantal is our neighbor, confident, friend, go to person, and she even acted as my French teacher. I could not have imagined life here without her. Many, many afternoons we would hang out together and she taught me tons about jams, knitting, French politics, and all around life, but I’ll get to that later. One day, we decided to go for a walk. First, she should me the old farmhouse just outside the village where she used to live, and then, we went to explore the nearby abandoned gold mine.
Chapter 7: Adventures with Chantal
The grey cloud cover from the morning has turned into a fog, which is getting thicker with each passing minute. It has created an illusion that makes certain trees or rocks appear more prominent by blocking out the rest of the countryside. They are vibrantly green or grey and take on some self-imposed importance. I have never been to this area before, so I follow Chantal’s lead as the path becomes less and less visible. The vegetation is slowly taking it over, and we need to be more aware of hanging brambles, which appear from nowhere in the fog. Chantal pushes then aside as she passes; they swing back, and I have to be careful not to take one in the face. We stop for water and a quick break and Chantal catches me up on the history of the mine.
“Not many people know this mine exists. When the government closed it, they didn’t plug up all the shafts off completely, so, to keep people out, it’s marked as an iron mine on maps. In the end, it would cost more to mine the gold than its actual worth, so they shut it down. It’s just a few hundred yards more in that direction”, she says pointing 45 degrees from our current trajectory while turning and marching off towards it. I jump aside to avoid her, but place my foot on some rocks that slip from under me; I end up falling into a tree, but Chantal has not witnessed what has happened.
She turns around and asks, “Are you coming?”
“Yes, yes; I’m right behind you”, I say with a little smile while brushing off my hands and continuing behind her.
We get there in a matter of minutes, but it really isn’t the glamour I thought it would be. The mine entrance is hard to locate. It’s behind some overgrown brush that we push aside to look at. It is much smaller than I expected, and if it wasn’t boarded up, I would need to bend down to enter. About 10 yards in front of it remains a large pile of rocks.
“This is the quarry part of the mine,” Chantal tells me. “If you want to find gold, you need to break these stones to find it.” Her voice echoes in the emptiness.
By now, the fog is thick and looming heavily over us; we cannot see more than 30 feet. The trees that were so vibrantly green before are now dulled and the silhouettes of their branches fade into the surrounding air. It is not clear where the object start and the fog begins. It has an abandoned ghost town feeling to it, and gives off a somewhat eerie vibe. Even the birds are quiet.
We pick through a few rocks, but since we forgot hammers, there is little to find.
“Chantal, what is that smell?” I ask.
“Arsenic; it occurs naturally with the gold here. The gold is compressed between two layers of it, so it needs to be broken though to get to the gold. It’s poisonous”, she says.
I look at her and drop the rock in my hand.
“I’ve done this numerous times”, she says in a reassuring voice. “The quantity on your hands is not enough to harm you, but you should wash your hands as soon as we get back.” She stops, and then continues, “We aren’t finding anything, so we should go”.
Pausing, I realize the fog has closed in on the place, emphasizing the isolation of an earlier life here. Not more than a generation ago, men worked here with tools no more complicated than what their hands could fabricate. They dragged cart hauling mules stubbornly up long shafts to the eventual daylight, only to break their backs in hopes of striking gold in the boulders they have found. The idea sends chills down my spine, and I race to catch up with Chantal who has already pushed her way through to the next clearing.
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