France, 1998 / From the Pyrenees

I went to France to escape Texas. Texas packed a bag.

A presidential sex scandal, school protests, Kenzo shoes on a mountain, and the dinner my family was never going to forget. I went abroad to learn French. The rest of the education was less carefully scheduled.

Jo Falieu, Marie-Thérèse (‘Marithé’) Louis, Anne-Marie Louis and other participants formed a communal life at L’Itaca, acquired collectively in 1982. The family and its fellow residents rebuilt the mas, which later became part of another remarkable collective endeavor: a citizen-owned cooperative helping preserve mountain agriculture.

The experiment was modern; the ground beneath it was not. Nyer’s name appears in records more than eleven centuries ago. Nearby, Saint-André d’Eixalada was founded beside the hot springs in 840 and destroyed by flood in 878. The medieval Roca d’Anyer guarded the gorge; the Barony of Nyer passed through the kingdoms of Majorca and Aragon; and the Nyerros later carried the village’s name into Catalonia’s factional wars and bandit country. Only after the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 did this part of the Conflent become French territory. I arrived thinking I had left history behind. In fact, I had moved directly into it.