“Don’t go back to sleep.” (Rumi)

Late Friday, I returned from nearly 2 1/2 weeks in France. Partly I went–we went, because my travelling companion was my husband, John–for sheer pleasure (think pain au chocolate, ancient streets, delicious dinners with glasses of nice wine) and partly to accumulate some material for a piece of writing I’ve had in mind for more than 50 years. When I say I had the writing in mind, I have to admit I didn’t know it was there until I found its source: the paleolithic cave art in the southwest of France. Was it an article I read as a 19 year old, entranced by the photographs of bison, horses, aurochs, and reindeer? I think it was. The images entered my consciousness and have lingered ever since, waiting for me to remember them and explore them. So that was one objective of our travels. In order to visit as many caves as possible, I arranged for a rental car in Sarlat, the small town where we’d spend 8 nights. (The photograph at the top is what we saw each time we opened our door.) I booked time in two caves–you have to do this for several of them because limited numbers of people are allowed in–and had plans to visit several more, the ones which don’t sell tickets in advance but advise you to come early. Imagine my surprise, distress, and anger when the car rental person went quiet and didn’t respond to my increasingly desperate texts and emails. (I couldn’t use my phone.) On the day we were to collect the car and realized it simply wasn’t going to happen, we tried to find another one nearby to rent. No luck. But at the tourist office in Sarlat, a young woman recommended Clara Aussel, a local guide who could drive us to places, the ones we knew we wanted to go to and the ones we didn’t even imagine we’d love. Clara was wonderful. She took us to Font-de-Gaume near Les Eyzies, one of the places I’d arranged tickets for, and we had time in the beautiful village of Les Eyzies afterwards. I will write at length about that cave once I’ve let the whole experience settle. She also took us to Rouffignac on another day and I realized it was the cave I’d read about all those years ago, the one you descend into via a small electric train. We went to Lascaux by bus, before we knew about Clara, and it was both wonderful and unsettling because in my ignorance, I’d bought tickets to Lascaux 11, the first reproduction of the cave, or at least the 2 most important rooms, created over ten years, leading up to its opening in 1983, a necessary development because of molds and massive quantities of carbon dioxide causing significant deterioration to the paintings in the original cave, due to human intrusion. I didn’t know there was also Lascaux IV (Lascaux III is a touring exhibit), a multi-media experience which allows you to experience the entire cave with other displays and so on. The bus stops (infrequently) at Lascaux IV and Lascaux II is a 2 kilometer walk further up the hill. We’d arrived with a little time to spare before our tour with an English-speaking guide but not enough time to actually walk to Lascaux II once I realized I’d messed up. So we bought tickets for Lascaux IV and it was great but oh, how I wish we’d been able to see the earlier iteration. (If we’d had a car, of course we’d simply have driven up…)

The sensation of descending into darkness, at Rouffignac and at Font-de-Gaume, and having a guide carefully shine a light on cave walls, the sensation of seeing the animals appear, as lively and fresh as they must have been when first painted 17,000 years ago (Font-de-Gaume) or 13,000 years ago (Rouffignac), to see them appear racing along a ledge of rock, pausing to extend a tongue to another’s antlers, to gallop up a face of the cave, mammoths and horses circling the smooth ceiling at the end of the cave, as beautiful as the Sistine Chapel. When people tell me that an encounter with something like a painting or a piece of music is life-changing, I tend to wonder what that means. How does a life change by pigment, by the graceful line of a horse’s cheek, a delicate hoof? But now I know it does and I will try to explore that as best I can in language.

I woke early the first morning I was home and I realized I’d dreamed I was still in Font-de-Gaume. It was completely dark but I wasn’t afraid. I knew the horses and reindeer were gathered around me on the walls, antlers tossing, tails streaming behind. I knew something in the dream. I knew there was a way in, and a way out. Damp air, the print of a hand just under a outcropping of rock.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
                               –Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks