Day 20 - Mont Saint Michel

On Tuesday we took our one and only Norman day trip.

The trip was about an hour and half in our nine passenger Volkswagen van. It’s a gem of a vehicle that I wish was available in the United States. It would be a nice middle ground option between a minivan and fifteen passenger behemoth.

We do have one child who is subject to carsickness, so ... there was one extended stop to ‘tour’ a local field. The crop was nothing I had ever seen before, though -- more golden even than wheat, with a small, bowl like heads. Despite trying to research it later, I couldn’t come up with any clear leads on the crop.

The trip took us through some great countryside and actually across some of the route for the Tour de France, which had been held recently. There were vestiges of the tour in the form of signs, road makers and little French towns done all up for the occasion.

Then we arrived at our destination -- Mont Saint Michel. We arrived on the first day the site had been open to the public after an extended strike by the local merchants, who were upset about a new arrangement for parking and shuttling visitors to the town. It was clearly a setback for their business, so, of course in France you strike! But I was really glad the strike had ended because this is not a place to miss.

Words do not do Mont Saint Michel justice, not even photos. It is a perfect feudal town contained within defensive walls and surrounded by a tidal flat. A high fog was still lingering when we arrived so at first view, the abbey in the center of the town was shrouded in mist. From a distance it seemed like Avalon, a place on the very borderlands of high faery.

As we approached and the vision became clearer, it was not hard (though a bit anachronistic) to imagine knights riding out on quest from the gates.

Inside, the crowded lower streets wind their way around the base of the cliffs. There are shops, alleys, restaurants, hotels, graveyards, parks and stairways -- stairways everywhere.

But as we ascended, the crowds thinned out somewhat. We stopped for a while in a park to listen to  concert. We ate our lunch in another small sitting area overlooking the tidal flats. Eventually we made it to the Abbey itself and into the beautiful cloister, featured in Terrence Mallick’s To the Wonder.

There were many places of surprising solitude and calm throughout the town, but especially in the abbey. Great pillars underground. A water wheel pulley system. Small but verdant gardens. Simple works of religious art. And the still mist shrouded cloister.

We caught no glimpse of any members of the religious order that has occupied the Abbey since 2001 -- the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. The abbey itself actually has an interesting religious history. It was shut down as a monastery following the French Revolution and only saw the return of any religious orders in 1966. At present, though the monks are allowed to carry on their religious life, the abbey is still owned by the state.

After descending, we decided to venture out onto the tidal flats and walk around the mount barefooted -- another exquisite experience that is barely relatable. An expanse of mud, glittering now as the sun finally broke through. Small stone chapels and hermitages. Hewn staircases leading down to the water. Coming around the other side. Washing feet. Heading home.

That evening, Jen and I wandered into Bayeux for dessert.

A magical day indeed.

Day 20 Reflection One

Visiting Mont Saint Michel was an instance of something I had experienced several times before -- the awakening to the reality of a landmark or historic site that can come only through its geographic context. The most striking of these have been my first visit to South Bend, IN, (seeing the golden dome of Notre Dame emerge as if magic out of the midst of cornfields), visiting the Alamo for the first time (turning the corner of an ordinary San Antonio street and running into … the Alamo?), and this visit to Mont St. Michel.

Each of these was different. My notion of Notre Dame had led me to expect something a little grander of South Bend. The Alamo was an utter shock, as I had always imagined the site in a Texas desert setting.

But with Mont Saint Michel, what was surprising was the sheer amount of full human life going on. The town, the shops, the hotels, the post office and police station. Though almost exclusively tourist oriented, the town swarmed with people doing all manner of things. I had previously thought of it only as an abbey -- an exclusively religious site.

It would have been easy to be put off by the ‘secular’ bustle. (Rick Steves even calls it “grotesquely touristic”). However, I think this is a misunderstanding. As Steves even points out, “It’s some consolation to remember that, even in the Middle Ages, this was a commercial gauntlet, with stalls selling souvenir medallions, candles, and fast food.”

What I had expected was a religious site in the modern sense -- something apart from the secular. What I found was a location that pre-dated the distinction. A microcosm of old Christendom. As such it was a revelation.

As I write this, I am put hopefully in mind of Peter Leithart’s recent article in First Things, “Micro-Christendoms.”

Day 20 Reflection Two

Unlike the rest of the churches in Europe that we visited (with the possible exception of Hallgrímskirkja), the location of the church on a great central height really did make the approach seem like a pilgrimage. In Paris, wandering in and out of churches at street level created a completely different feel.

There is something about an ascent.

I suspect Mallick was keenly aware of this in using Mont Saint Michel for the setting of To the Wonder.

Day 19 -- Pointe Du Hoc and Utah Beach

On Monday we visited my personal favorite of the D-Day sites -- Pointe du Hoc.

Pointe du Hoc was the German gun site between Utah and Omaha Beach that was believed to be heavily fortified and essential to Operation Overlord. The 2nd Ranger Battalion assaulted the location scaling the cliffs with ropes. They found that most of the heaviest guns had been moved, but they held the point for two days without reinforcements against several counterattacks.

This was the site of Ronald Reagan's speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. (Click the link to watch the video of the speech.)

The pillboxes and gun installments remain, as well as the deep pits from Allied bombing ahead of the invasion.

One is pretty much free to roam over the point. Kids play hide and seek and look for snails. Middle aged adults wander and consult their guidebooks. Old men stand pensively looking out across the channel.

Looking down the cliffs and imagining scaling them under fire was pretty amazing, even if the resistance was not quite what they had expected. It took great courage, especially with the element of surprise having been largely taken away by a navigation error and unexpected weather.

We stayed for quite a while. One interesting side bonus was the discovery of a "camera obscura" effect down in the underground tunnels. I was taking pictures down below and noticed that on one wall opposite a small opening, there was a ghostly image of an upside down human form wearing pink. I turns out it was Nora, who was standing just outside the opening!

After leaving we spent some time on Utah Beach. The girls made a seaweed fortress while Dietrich and I walked up the beach and the rest of the adults looked on. Found some interesting shells I had never seen on the Pacific coast.

Ice cream treats afterwards. Thanks, Gramps!

Day 19 Reflection One

Watching Reagan's speech (written by Peggy Noonan, by the way), I was struck by how relevant his remarks are to our current world situation.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

Agree or disagree, we are still having the same conversation about American isolationism that we have been having since gaining essential independence from the entire Eurasian situation. We are the only major world power occupying land that is at a geographical remove from all of Western History. This definitely offers an opportunity for isolation that other countries do not have in their relations with each other. But how should we understand ourselves in relation to them? Not an easy question and one that so-called liberals and conservatives disagree upon among themselves.

Day 19 Reflection Two

There was a well dread older man at the Pointe speaking German with a younger man who was with him. I wondered at how different it must be to tour a great historical site as a place of defeat rather than victory, and ignominious defeat at that.

Were there heroes on the German side? Undoubtedly. Do most Germans now thoroughly renounce the Nazi ambitions and radical German nationalism? Absolutely. But there are still grandfathers who fought in those engagements and probably believed to some extent that what they were doing at least approximated the 'right thing' -- even if that was the simple duty of fighting for one's country.

Modern Germany, as a prosperous, peaceful leader in Europe is something of a political and sociological miracle.It is astonishing that so many men could adopt and pass on to their children an entirely different narrative and world view.

Day 19 Reflection Three

The incongruity of my children (and the rest of the world's children for that matter) playing games on the wreckage of World War II France struck me as significant.

Poetically the scene was full of potential. Maybe someday.

Sociologically, it underscored for me the reality of something G.F.W. Hegel says in his lectures On Reason in History:

When we contemplate this display of passions and the consequences of their violence, the unreason which is associated not only with them, but even – rather we might say especially – with good designs and righteous aims; when we see arising therefrom the evil, the vice, the ruin that has befallen the most flourishing kingdoms which the mind of man ever created, we can hardly avoid being filled with sorrow this universal taint of corruption. And since this decay is not the work of mere nature, but of human will, our reflections may well lead us to a moral sadness, a revolt of the good will (spirit) – if indeed it has a place within us. Without rhetorical exaggeration, a simple, truthful account of the miseries that have overwhelmed the noblest of nations and polities and the finest exemplars of private virtue forms a most fearful picture and excites emotions of the profoundest and most hopeless sadness, counter-balanced by no consoling result. We can endure it and strengthen ourselves against it only by thinking that this is the way it had to be – it is fate; nothing can be done. And at last, out of the boredom with which this sorrowful reflection threatens us, we draw back into the vitality of the present, into our aims and interests of the moment; we retreat, in short, into the selfishness that stands on the quiet shore and thence enjoys in safety the distant spectacle of wreckage and confusion.