It’s been a cold moon this week; a bright full moon with a large orange star about a thumb’s width to the left, shining in a clear sky; shining on the hard edges of the buildings in the village and glittering on frost-covered roofs. It was very cold as I stood on the balcony of my friend’s house late at night. It was too cold for any more snow to fall. The path between the houses is treacherous though nearly snow free for a few days now, remaining vegetation having a sort of surprised look, still standing stiffly, caught out by the extreme cold. The tracks along the road are rutted and criss-crossed. Footprints in thin snow of walking boots point this way and that.
The morning air is sharp and clean and cold enough to chase away sleep. The sky is completely white and the Grand Bec at the head of the valley is only visible in contrast – as if a 3B pencil had shaded in the rocky sections. A sketch on white paper. The temperatures have fallen again (minus 25 Celsius at 3000 metres) and one morning even the thermometer on my balcony, which is at 666 metres, showed minus 18 at seven o’clock. These are days when you take care just walking and winter clothes are worn in layers most of the day. You make sure to have spare hat and gloves, socks, big boots and an extra coat in the boot of the car along with shovel, blanket, torch, jump leads and chains. The printed weather forecast I pin up at work each day sympathetically commented that people were having difficulty fitting their snow chains: the metal was sticking to their hands. It spoke of ‘glacial’ cold and ‘polar’ temperatures. This is deep midwinter, just like in the Christmas carol, ’earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone’. In fact, there is no sound of water now. The village troughs have all been turned off and emptied for the season, supposedly to save the stone from cracking. Locally it is suspected that this is the first step towards eliminating this supply of free water in the neighbourhood. I’m sure I heard the same story last year. Even the torrents which normally race down the valleys seem less excited. Strange icy growths overhang every rock from bunches of icicle grasses and plants standing in the frigid water spray.
Icicles hang too from the cliffs on my mountain road to work, often yellow- stained from the seepage through the soil. Partway up there is a picnic area and in the middle stands the most perfectly symmetrical fir tree, bearing its weight of snow as if on many-fingered hands. White paws. Up to 1500 metres the woodland is mostly broadleaf but across the valley where the peaks are frequently hidden in mist, only their lower slopes may be seen, disappearing into evergreen forest. To look back along the valley side is to see, as if through smoke, a vast hillside army of identical firtrees standing in ranks, every one of them as special as this one solitary sentinel. Lower down, the bare branches of beech, birch and sycamore form a tree tunnel over the road, each limb and twig, each leftover leaf and bunch of mistletoe, snow-covered in its own hard white exoskeleton. On the upper side of this road are pine trees, rising steeply. At their feet, sudden colour in this grey-white world; bright orange pine needles. The woodland is dense here and they have escaped the snow. Beech leaves lie thickly, glowing in the pale light. Last night, returning home I surprised two wild boar; the first crossing the road in my headlights, the second, giving a good stare in my direction for a few moments, dashing after. I stopped the car and could hear them running down the hillside in the leaves. While we seek the warmth of our homes in this frozen land how do these animals survive for all they are solidly built? A few days ago I watched a slender red squirrel as it hopped over the road to disappear into the tree cover. My friend tells me this is one of the few places the red one can thrive since it is hardier than the grey squirrel. Dozens of crows jostled for spaces along snowy branches. All must eat and survive the night.
Then late at night it began to snow again as temperatures have risen a little. It is still snowing now. A drive along the woodland paths shows the snow reached everywhere this time, and thickly. You can see a long way under the trees now. Many animal tracks cross the road – deer? boar? rabbits? They are too deep and fluffy to identify but there’s still much activity here evidently. I gave a lift up to Champagny on my way to work to a woman whose car couldn’t manage the hillside road in the snow. It’s the last bend which catches you out, just below the village. As we approached it my passenger said ‘Ah, la Sainte Philomène, elle est méchante’. In truth there is a small wayside shrine on this last bend and Saint Philomène stands, nicely painted, inside her niche. She is holding something in her arms but even close inspection cannot make out what – is it a pheasant, a set of bagpipes, a bunch of ferns? The lady didn’t know either but locals regard her with suspicion. Certainly there is a good drop behind her. We made it safely.
This valley is called the valley of Bozel. It was easy to see why this morning on my day off. It lies further up the valley in a wide plain at the point where the road divides for Pralognan and Champagny. The sun fills the valley there, making the town a very agreable place to live. This must have been the original settlement. It is a thriving community, having all the necessities and none of the inconveniences of the ski stations. There is a library, a medical centre, a butcher, two bakers and many small shops selling gifts, hardware, wines and cheeses, mountain bike or ski hire according to the season, two small supermarkets as well as several industrial workshops. Property prices are rising however as talk of connecting the town to Courchevel 1550 by a cable car continues to circulate. It was very sunny there today, the snow had stopped and the sky was clearing to a pale blue. It was comfortable to walk about. Normality restored, for a few days at least. Snowfalls are not as prodigious as fifty years ago when five or six metres of snow filled the villages and people cut tunnels to get about and lost contact with their neighbours for weeks at a time. The temperature will rise and fall like this for the next four months or so in wintry Europe and we must stay warm and keep the bucket of sawdust filled. This is deep midwinter.
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copyright Julia Austen 2015