28.

June 23rd. TRANSHUMANCE



June is the month when the animals move from the middle pastures, way up the hills and mountain slopes, along ancient tracks into fresh, high grassland.

Emile puts a patterned leather and wool collar around the lead cow’s thick neck, along with her important bell. The half grown calves amble, stumble and butt each other. Columns of cattle teem up the slopes, bellowing and lowing like a cello and double bass orchestra. They leave trails of partly eaten grass and scents of sweet, fermenting breath. When we cross a lane, the waiting car inmates are already out with their cameras. This migration has gone on for year after year, century after century. Read Graham Robb’s wonderful book, THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE and you will get some idea of the immense age of these disparate, rural practices. ‘ A century ago, some of these journeys lasted for weeks’, he writes. ‘These are probably the oldest routes in France.’
He describes those long lines of cattle, dogs and humans as ‘caravans’, ‘land-going ocean liners of livestock’. Now, of course, quad bikes and trucks are often used in the drive, but Emile is walking, with several of us helping, along rutted, hard tracks. Marie is in the van, way behind on the metalled lanes, which curve up to the col.