postcard: “they came to us”

yesterday, we spent most the day at Lascaux IX, the recreated world of the ancient cave above Montignac-Lascaux, and it was wonderful. But somehow the most remarkable thing to me was knowing that the original cave was just 100 meters back in the woods. It’s not possible to visit that one. I understand why. But still.

Today we went to Font-de-Gaume. I’d booked tickets ages ago and so we walked up along a limestone escarpment to meet our guide. The sides of the path were green with hart’s tongue ferns, a small vivid campanula, remaining leaves from spring’s bee orchids, a few figs, succulents and tiny wildings growing in bowls in the limestone. John’s photo shows the entrance to the cave which we entered with 8 others. We were told to keep our clothing close to our bodies and not to touch the cave walls. We walked into darkness.

When our guide shone his light on the first grouping of bison, I wept. The hairy rhino, the incised deer, one licking the antler of another, its tongue beautifully rendered with superb skill, and the horses, oh the horses.

i have already begun to think my way into an essay though in some ways it’s more like accessing the beings who’ve been in my imagination since I first read about them 50 years ago. Horses rendered in manganese oxide, red and yellow ochre, their anatomies as perfect as anything before or since

Our guide told us how the (re)discoveries of the caves in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries often met with disbelief. No, it’s not possible that these are old. Someone is playing a joke. But then, he said, “when we believed, they came to us ” They still come to us, the muzzles of the horses alive in the dim beam of the guide’s light, their scent ripe with the wild grasses of the Vezere valley, the reindeer in their small affectionate moment, 15,000 thousand years ago, or longer. Walking back, the oak leaves rustled under our feet