A Protest, a Park and a Painter

About 20 miles south of Avignon, Alpilles Natural Regional Park is a large nature preserve, described on google maps as full of "marked trails for hiking, biking and horse riding," and featuring "expansive olive groves stretching across the limestone hills." No fees or passes of any kind are required to enjoy the "massive landscape of open hills and valleys." Oooh... nice!

And a perfect-sounding getaway day trip yesterday, as some of Avignon's (and other French cities') peace has been disturbed by student protests over a shortage of teachers and school staff, and other complaints about insufficient resources and infrastructure. To be French is to participate in strikes and protests.

Yesterday was exactly one month after our arrival in Europe and I wanted to escape crowds and cars generally. A long, quiet hike would be a welcome reprieve.

Google maps delivered us to the right bus, which dropped us in the town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence a couple blocks from a park information office. The staff helpfully offered a QR code that led to a website full searchable trails, maps and other information that at first glance looked helpful. Try as we might, however, we couldn't crack the code to find a single nearby trail. We walked through the town (it's quite charming) in the direction of the larger park as shown in the google maps, found some roadside archeological ruins and small olive groves, but never a trail longer than a few hundred yards and never the quiet and solitude I had yearned for.

We did, however, discover the Vincent Van Gogh Walk, a series of bronze medallions, each inscribed with "Vincent," embedded every few steps over about one kilometer of sidewalk. Along that path are numerous display panels that pair a reproduction of one of van Gogh's paintings of this area with an excerpt from the Dutch artist's letters to his brother or other family members.

The trail ends at the psychiatric clinic where van Gogh stayed (voluntarily) near the end of his short and tormented life, a harsh reminder of the elusiveness of peace and the fact that many others are searching for it.

In the letters, van Gogh describes his surroundings, art and various preoccupations. Here are a few examples.

Shortly after his arrival at the psychiatric hospital: "Though there are some who cry out and are often incoherent, there is much true friendship here... They say we must tolerate others so that others will tolerate us."

The inspiration for Starry Night: "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very large."

His stoic view of mortality, on The Reaper: "I then saw in this reaper a vague image like a devil fighting to the death to come to the end of his work... But there's nothing sad in this death, it goes its way in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything with a light of pure gold."

On The Olive Trees: "The effect of daylight on this scenery is difficult to put into words... The olive trees are very characteristic, and I am struggling to capture it. It’s silver, now more blue, now greenish, bronzed, whitening against the soil."

On Cypresses: "The cypresses still preoccupy me. I should like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers, because it surprises me that they have not yet been done as I see them. They are as beautiful in line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk."

On a Green Wheat Field: "A field of wheat turning yellow, surrounded by bramble bushes and green bushes. At the end of the field, a small pink house with a tall cypress... It is a very peaceful landscape, and very soft in color."

By the numbers:

3 countries visited in Europe so far (Switzerland, The Netherlands, France)

14 cities or towns visited so far (Geneva, Montreux, Gruyère, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Delft, Breukelen, Paris, Dijon, Lyon, Avignon, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence)

21 "panels" on the Vincent Van Gogh Walk depicting various works inspired by the area

197 square miles in Alpilles Natural Regional Park

860 total oil paintings by van Gogh, most during the last two years of his life, in Provence

15,186 average steps per day for the last 30 days, the first time my average has climbed over 15,000