This morning I had a To Do list, which I’ve been working through this week. I glanced at it around 9am, and looked at the weather forecast, and thought: “I’m not going to get most of this done before it rains anyway.” I did a bit of gite prepping for guests arriving tomorrow, I put a first coat of paint on my antique window greenhouse, and I hopped in the car to do a bit of site-seeing.
Just around Treignac and throughout the Correze are multiple layers of history: neolithic sites, Druid/Celt sites, Gallo-Roman sites, medieval ruins, Romanesque and Gothic churches and abbeys, painted caves, etc. We’ve lived here a year and have done some exploration, but it’s easy to get into a rut of “I’m working in the garden” and to forget one of the primary reasons we chose to live here: to see cool shit.
Today I drove 10 minutes over to the small village of Lestards. Sprinkled about Lestards in the forested hills are several medieval crosses–some dating back to immediately after the fall of Rome. I’d passed a small sign next to the main road several times which read “Le Croix en Haute.” Today I parked alongside the entrance to the trail and hiked up.
“En Haute” is an apt description. The hike was short–perhaps ten minutes, but it was steep. The path is an old rocky lumber road mostly overgrown and it runs directly uphill between pastures dappled in the typical French wildflower display.
There is on the left hand side a forest after a bit of a climb, and at the edge of the forest is a grove which feels different somehow from the rest of the landscape. One gets the sense immediately that this is a sacred spot, and likely was long before the Croix itself was placed, probably by monks desperate to convert the local pagans to Christianity by decorating their holy sites and sacred wells with crosses and saint’s names. The air is fresher and cooler in the grove, the loamy moss-covered earth invites one to move slowly and thoughtfully. The birds sing but they are less raucous than elsewhere. Whatever spirit or deity was originally evoked in long-forgot rites at this place still whispers around the trunks and amongst the grasses and flowers.
But there is room here for the early Christian sentiment as well, and it pervades the spot with a more dense and contemplative mood in counterpoint to the brisk and playful fay. I spent a good 40 minutes at the site, examining the cross and its surroundings, then doing my daily Qi Gong routine at the grove’s edge. As I moved through the sequence of slow movements, village church bells rung 10 am–the first sounding deep and bronzy from Lestards, then a moment later from Veix somewhat tinny and a bit further down the valley. The long-stemmed flower varietals swayed in a strong steady wind up the slope from below, indicating an approaching storm. Somewhere above and behind a woodpecker did his tapping devotions .
Christ on the cross is pretty clear in this rough carving, as are the faces of two others beneath his arms. Are they those crucified alongside him that day? Or witnesses to his execution? The two Marys perhaps, or Roman centurians? Were I to scrape away the lichen and moss on its base would I find any markings? Or spots worn smooth by the touch of generations of genuflecting seekers?
I imagine I’ll come here often over the years we spend in Treignac. It’s a very evocative place, and Lestards with its small thatched-roof eglise and spring water fountain is a favorite regular destination for us. I might later this summer or fall have to tackle the trail which hits several of these crosses around the village.
Mysterium Coniunctionis 