Mountain Climbing in the Pyrénées

Hello all! Sorry it has been so long since my last update, but due to the extreme demand for new posts (aka the occasional question from my mom and Michelle) I'm going to do at least two new ones now instead of working on my intercultural journal. Turns out I'm just as good at procrastinating in Europe as I am in the good old US of A.

This first post, as the name so clearly describes, is going to be about my trip to the Pyrénées with the Dickinson Center. I'm going to do more than one post because I don't want everything I need to write to get jumbled. Alright. Onto the mountain climbing.

So on Tuesday, September 7 the entire Dickinson en France group got up very early to catch a bus to Pays Cathare... a region of France in the Pyrénées where the Cathares lived when they were being hunted down by the Christians. They believed in Dualism... the existence of a God of good (heaven and man's soul) and a God of evil (the body and earth's material things). Once the Christians heard about it, they were none too pleased, and essentially decided to start a crusade to hunt down the Cathares, and either have them renounce their religion or be burned alive. As a result, the Cathares took to the mountains to hide from the crusaders.

On this trip we visited two ruins of châteaux in which the Cathares hid: Roquefixade and Montségur. Roquefixade, as shown in the picture above, was the smaller of the two mountains we climbed, and has been there since 1034. Can you believe that? The age of everything in Europe is absolutely astounding to me. I feel like nothing we are currently constructing will be in existence a thousand years from now.


Anyway, the bus stopped in the town at the base of the mountain (picture above). It was an adorable little place, I think someone told me that only 50 people live there today, although I'm sure the town gets tons of foot traffic from all the avid expeditioners. The going up was definitely not easy, and at times somewhat treacherous, given the tiny gravel on the steep parts of the trail. I was made painfully aware of the age of my tennis shoes; the soles have been worn slick and offer little to no traction. Once we got to the top, there was a little bit of actual rock climbing involved to get to the ruins of the châteaux, which was fun. I kind of like scaling rocks, as long as they're not too high. It is, however, a miracle that I didn't kill myself on this excursion... mountain climbing is generally no the best idea for people as clumsy as I am.

(Commencement of the actual rock climbing... the people on the ruins are other Dickinson students)

(View from the top... the picture never does it justice.)

After we made our way down the mountain and refilled our waterbottles, we hopped back on the bus and headed off to Montségur. We had lunch at the base of the town, outdoors, all organic food... the most enormous and delicious peice of quiche I have ever seen and then subsequently eaten in my life. It was nice and relaxing, although we were all stuffed and ready to go take a nap right around the time that we had to do more hiking.

(This is where we started. The path straight ahead is actually perilously steep, although you can't tell from the picture.)

Montségur was an interesting place because it was actually the last of the Cathares' strongholds. It's name actually comes from words that mean "secure mountain", which is clear even in English. This is probably because the mountain was much, much higher. It's difficult to tell from the picture above, but it was a lot steeper, too. I had a tough time... I'm not really much of an outdoorsy girl, and though I do love the mountains, I don't really make a habit of scaling them every chance I get. I wouldn't have missed the view for the world, though.

(View from the top.)

After we made our way back down the mountain, we hopped in the bus again and headed off to a little town called Vals, where we visited a church that was quite literally built inside a rock. Although the church was added onto in many different time periods, it's believed that people first started worshiping there in 2000 B.C. Crazy. The church was beautiful, and, as a bonus, we were all able to cool off inside the cool rock after having been sweating all day.

(Church at Vals.)

Well, that's all for now. Needless to say it was an incredible trip, albeit entirely exhausting. I hope my summary was concise enough... it's hard when there's so many pictures I want to show. Here's a link to my facebook album with all of my pictures... and I mean all of them. There are more pictures of my house, life in Toulouse, this trip as well as my more recent vacation (which should be the subject of my next blog post)... you name it. So, check it out, and leave a comment here to let me know what you think.

And, as always, thanks for reading.

Bryna