Hiking the Pyrenean Peaks

Been hiking the Pyrenean peaks around Luchon City, and, when in the valleys, overbusy with family matters — my apologies for the long absence from the blog. When I started NOMADICS a few months ago I did so on the promise to myself that I would NOT have to blog daily, that I would keep the blogging loose & open. Easier said than done: the desire for and pleasure in daily intercourse on this e-plane or bloggo-sphere is surprisingly strong. As are the withdrawal symptoms when this is not possible. Unhappily I will have to suffer said symptoms somewhat longer: tomorrow I am off to Morocco, two weeks of family travel, then a month of study & work in Fez. Not sure when or how often I’ll get to a fast internet connection — but I’ll try!

Meanwhile, here are some photos from the hiking, sans much commentary. Certainly would like & will try at some point to write about the hiking experience, but now need to start packing for the next stage.

One event I did want to mention: learned with sadness a few days ago of the death of Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, the great Casablanca-born Algerian poet & scholar to whom we owe a translation of The 1001 Nights (with André Miquel) which I mentioned a few weeks ago on this blog, and an excellent book on Arabic poetics, among other works. A good general article in French can be found here and the obit in Libération, here.

And now to the photos:

The shepherd’s hut on the Montné where we spent a night,
with rain storm & great clouds raging outside.

The salamander at the hut’s doorstep, whose presence
should have alerted us to the bad weather we would get.

The fire on which we grilled the lamb chops to eat with
the wine we schlepped up (the shepherd produced an
excellent bottle of plumb eau-de-vie; then there was
much singing…

… and a little poetry reading.)

The next hike involved a steep four-hour climb in the late afternoon;
here is a sequence of those images from low-level wooded vistas to above-
tree-line heath & the hut we spent the night in:

…and the next day, we hiked from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., crest-walking three peaks & then descending slowly to a village where we were picked up by car: