My return to the US is immanent. Last night we went out to--celebrate?
grieve?--mark the transition with our friend Cristian. We visited three great restaurants—two
were closed, the third overcrowded into the rainy street—before we settled on
an Italian restaurant. Oh My goodness, was it good! Best pasta ever! I don’t
even know what mine was called: it was small raviolis stuffed with some kind of
cheese and vegetables, topped with eggplant, tomatoes and parmesan cheese and a
sprig of fresh basil. The flavor was so rich and nuanced, nothing like any
ravioli I’ve ever had in the states. The Spanish wine was excellent too. And
Mike swooned over the cheesecake. Not only was the piece Trumpianly HUGE, but the
cake was lighter and richer than anything he’s ever tasted. The waiter let us
in on the secret ingredient: white chocolate.
After dinner—quite late by US standards of course, as we didn’t
even meet for dinner till 8:30 then did all that wandering around—we walked
through the Arc de Triumph, which was more impressive than we had imagined all
those times we could have walked that way and didn’t. Cristian is an encyclopedia
of Catalan history, as well as a foodie, teacher at the college of
architecture, and hobbyist in sci-fi miniatures. He was our first Airbnb host
here and has befriended us ever since. I hope you get to meet him sometime.
(But don’t count on staying there: his place is always full up months in
advance.)
Mike made an offer on the boat in Lanzarote—his first choice—but
the owner is entertaining other offers, so our chance of getting it is remote.
We seriously considered a boat for sale in Martinique, which has a twin in
Sete, France. Mike was able to get in touch with the owner in Sete and arrange
to come look at his boat, in lieu of the more remote one. Sete is a 3.5-hour
drive from Barcelona. We rented a car and poked around a few harbors along the
way. By the time we found the campground, the office was closed, so we parked
outside and walked in and set up, expecting to register and pay in the morning.
Turned out the office was closed all day Sunday, and Monday morning too, so we were
squatters. The other twist was that by the time we got back from exploring and dining
both nights, the gate was locked, so we had to climb over the fence to get to
our tent.
Sete is a very interesting place. A long (30km?) sandspit
divides the beach and sea from a large lagoon; the working waterfront for the
town is laced with canals and bridges. There are lots and lots of small boats,
and big boats too. The couple who own and live on the catamaran are pretty cool
cats as well. He is an Orleans-style-jazz horn player and former circus
performer; she is an artist; they are both serious, world sailors. His boat is
big enough to host an 8-piece band for weeks at a time, and that is their gig:
sailing the world with a kaleidoscope of musician friends and playing gigs here
and there and making videos. See https://www.facebook.com/honkytonksail/
. We enjoyed each others’ company so much they volunteered to come crew for us
when we buy our boat!
But Mike decided not to buy the boat in Martinique. In addition
to the problem of geographical logistics, we decided it was a little too (slow
and) big, and therefore more expensive to moor. So now he is drafting an offer
on the boat in Frossay, France that we looked at seven weeks ago. The only reason
he didn’t make an offer in the first place was that it needs lots of work. If his
offer is accepted, he will go to Frossay to live and work on the boat while I
am in Alaska.
Other than that and taking care of mundane things like housekeeping,
bills and medical appointments, we have been spending lots of time in
libraries. Here is a sample of my most recent essay for my book.
Passages
Past and Present
Hannibal Barca, the famous general from the ancient
Carthaginian empire in north Africa, after a brilliant military campaign in
Hispania, set out in 218 BC to cross the Alps and attack Rome from the north.
To reach the Alps he marched his 38,000 foot soldiers, 8,000 cavalry and 38
elephants across the Pyrenees, crossing at the Coll de Panissars, adjacent to
the modern route and village of Le Perthus. (Most of the elephants later died
crossing the Alps.)
The route at that time was known as the Via Heraklea, referencing a myth in
which Hercules brought cattle from the western edge of the world across Spain,
Gaul and the Alps. It had been a Greek trade route since least the sixth
century BC. Before that, author Graham Robb speculates, it was a Celtic route
laid out in alignment with the rising sun at summer solstice.
By 202 BC, Rome had retaken Hispania; by 196 BC, Cartage
had been defeated and destroyed, and the Roman Empire was preeminent. To
facilitate trade and administer the empire, the Via Heraklea was rebuilt as the
Via Domitia to the northeast (circa 118 BC), and the Via Augusta to the southwest
(8 to 2 BC), joining at the Coll de Panissars. The Via Domitia was 376 Roman
miles (550km) and marked with mile stones starting at Panissars. The Via
Augustus to Gadés (Cadíz) was 1500km (930 miles).
The Via Domitia’s current name is highway A9, a busy,
four lane elevated freeway thick with semi-trailer trucks passing between
France and Spain. And the main street of the twin towns, Le Perthus on the
French side and La Junquera on the Spanish side, is thick with tourists, mainly
French residents coming across the border to buy cheap Spanish tobacco and
alcohol.
This junction of the roads at the pass was the favored
location for monuments. The great Roman general Pompey, returning from his
victorious campaign in Hispania in 71BC, erected a triumphal arch over the road,
topped with his statue. The side of the base facing Hispania was decorated with
the names of 876 conquered cities. According to the Greek historian and geographer Strabo
(63BC – 19AD), there was also a temple to the goddess Venus at the pass. Some
scholars believe that the Altar to Venus was incorporated into the base of the
triumphal arch as a tribute to the Emperor Augustus Cesar who claimed descent
from Venus. The Pompey Trophy was dismantled around the time of
the rise of Christianity in Hispania and the decline of the Roman empire at the
end of the 4th century or the beginning of the 5th.
Though the Pompey Trophy was well documented by Greek historians, the
archeological remains were not found until 1984. Stones from the Trophy show up
in different Roman fortifications nearby. Some of the stone paving on the Via
is still visible, marked with ruts from carts passing under the arch.
The Roman roads were also posted with mansiones—road
houses at which shelter, provisions and fresh horses could be obtained for
travelers on official business—at intervals of a day’s journey for a loaded cart.
The mansiones typically had garages, squares and barns for lodging by travelers
and their entourage. In many cases cities,
forts, villas of provincial officials and the infrastructure to sustain them
sprang up around the mansio. Archeologists recently discovered the
foundations of the Mansio Summum Pyrenaeum near the monument site. Evidence of
a second mansio known as Deciana was found nearby in La Jonquera. There
is scientific debate why the two mansiones were so close to each other. One
theory is that as the Panissars mansio became more heavily used by the Roman
Legions on their way to and from the Hispania provinces, the Deciana mansio was
created to better serve other travelers. Another theory was that as the
alternate route through the Col du Perthus became more used, the second mansio
was more convenient.
Circa 1011 AD, a community of monks from
Arles-Sur-Tech built a church--Santa Maria de Panissars--on the site of the
former Pompey Trophy and Mansio Summum Pyrenaeum. The institution expanded to
become a monastery and hospital at the end of the 11th century. The
Coll de Panissars at that time was one of the routes used by Christian pilgrims
trekking to Santiago de Compostela. The monastery was abandoned during the
border wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, a time of great
turmoil in the region and frequent quartering of troops. A fragment of the
semicircular apse of the church remains. West of the ruins of the monastery are
remnants of the medieval village of Panissars.
The monastery was demolished in 1638 and many of the stones
were reused for construction of Fort Bellegarde, which stands on the hill between
Col du Perthus and Coll de Pannissars.
The fort has a long and complicated military history.
In 1272, the kings of Majorca took the Roussillon region, which lies to the
north of the pass, from the kings of Aragon. They then built the castle Bellegarde
(1285) to protect their southern flank at the Coll de Panissars. The next 64
years were convoluted with geopolitical twists and turns between the two
kingdoms, with the net result that the Kingdom of Majorca was subsumed by
Aragon. France occupied the Roussillon region from 1463 to 1473, then again
between 1475 and 1493 under Louis XI, but King Charles VIII gave it back to
Spain. Perpignan, the capital of Roussillon, was besieged by Francois I in 1542,
without success. Richelieu and Louis XIII took the province back again in 1641.
The saga continues.
> 1659, conclusion of the Thirty Years War: The Treaty
of the Pyrenees moved the border between the French and the Spanish monarchies
100 kilometers to the south where it is today: dividing French and Spanish
Catalonia. Roussillon became officially and permanently French, but many
inhabitants were still Spanish at heart. The medieval fortress guarding the new
border was handed over to France.
> 1674, during the Franco-Dutch War: The Spanish army
occupied Bellegarde, but the fortress was retaken by the French the following year.
> 1679: The castle was torn down and the fort built in
its place, following the design of France’s most celebrated military architect,
Vauban. He said “it will be one of the most beautiful, best located and most
important fortresses.” With a garrison of 1200 men, 150 horses and a powerful
artillery, it became the stronghold of the French army in the Pyrenees.
> 1689-1697, the Nine Year’s War: The fortress guarded
the border, accommodated troops and stored munitions throughout the campaigns
in Catalonia.
> 1701-1715, the War of Spanish Succession: After the
death of the French king and after the Bourbon monarchy was consolidated in
Spain, several decades of peace ensued.
> 1793- 74, the French Revolution and the War of the
Pyrenees: the fortress was besieged and taken by the Spanish, then besieged and
retaken by the French the following year. The French general forbade any
bombardment because he wanted to preserve the fortress for the French republic.
> 1808-1813, the Catalonia campaigns: Bellegarde
accommodated Napoleonic soldiers.
1918, end of the First World War: The French army kept
a regiment in Bellegarde until the end of the First World War.
> 1939, the end of the Spanish Civil War: the fortress was used as a hospital for
Spanish Republican refugees fleeing Franco’s murderous, advancing forces.
> 1943-1945, World War II: The fort was used as a
holding prison by the Gestapo for escaped prisoners of war and enemy agents.
> 1967: The fort was listed by the French Ministry of
Culture as a historical monument and is managed for tourism. It includes four
exhibition halls devoted to the history of the fort and archeology of the
surrounding area.
> 1974: Scenes from the Charles Bronson film Breakout
were filmed at the fort.
Whew! What a saga of wars and geopolitical
convulsions! Alaska has never seen anything like it. The Eskimos and Indians of
Alaska have been rivals for millennia, but never engaged in organized warfare
to take territory or subject peoples--other than taking a few slaves, which the
Tlingit were wont to do. And the elephants! Hannibal had 38 African elephants in
Spain in 218 BC. Alaska had just two elephants: Anabelle, who came in 1966 to
live with grocer Jack Snyder, and Maggie who joined Annabelle at the zoo in
1983. Annabelle died in 1997 and Maggie retired to California in 2007. Before
that, we had lots of woolly mammoths, but the last one died about 14,000 years
ago.
As for roadhouses, one of our oldest was probably
Sheep Camp on the Klondike Trail over Chilkoot Pass. While the site had been
used for hundreds of years as a camping spot by Alaska Native traders traveling
to and from the Interior, the first structure was put up in the summer of 1897
at the start of the Gold Rush. It was a simple wooden structure with a store
and primitive lodging. By midwinter Sheep Camp had 52 businesses, including lodging
houses, restaurants, stores, saloons, dance halls, laundries, medical services
and transportation companies, serving a population of more than six thousand.
The town was abandoned in 1899, and within a decade the spring floods had taken
out most of the buildings. We just don’t build things to last the way the
Romans did.
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