mists, snags, and gratefulness

Here I am back again in Brittany. When the boat docks at Roscoff the sun is shaking off the mist. The bridge over La Penzé seems to float, though, with a few disembodied masts rising towards its underside.

Once I turn off near Morlaix for Huelgoat on the beautiful forest road, an August morning rush hour means I pass maybe four cars in a 20-odd mile stretch. Crossing the Landes de Cragou, the moorland section, the sun has broken right through, all bar one small mist-ribbon at tree-canopy level, and its slant illuminates the way that every gorse spike, of which there is thousand upon thousand, is blanketed in the webs spun by those little spiders that launch themselves on the currents of the breeze in early autumn.

Early autumn it feels, despite the increasing warmth; I pass line-ups of scores of swallows on wires.

And the little boulangerie has my favourite buckwheat bread, still warm from the oven.

These are good things. But I’m short on sleep, and the dog, who didn’t enjoy this crossing any more than the last, isn’t properly through her latest op yet, and we have a long long drive in the heat in my ancient campervan down to the hot Cévennes to lead the retreat I look forward to so much, coming as it does at the opposite end of the year from my Iona week (or weeks, now, I’m pleased to say). But I’m exhausted, and would be grateful to feel that I might do more than perch on the tightrope of my life for a while, since everything about my future is still in flux.

All this is forgotten as I drive up to the lake which is her usual beautiful elegant self, a pewter platter on which the morning, plus two swans, sits.

Right then, my gearbox goes.

First response: panic.

Second response: I still have 3rd gear, and it got me to Huelgoat, just a mile or three from my stopping-place for a couple of nights.

And the wonderful garage man, who always gives me one of those from deep-beneath-the-eyes smiles, lends me a car to get self, dog who’s too old to make it on foot, and gear up the steep hill to where I need to be, and takes the van keys to look at it as soon as.

What’s more, my dear friend B is driving all the way from Switzerland to be with me later today, and join me on the drive down (630 miles from here by the shortest route); and my much-loved friend H is immediately offering me help by text.

Dog and I have a brief wander into the early forest, and a coffee, while I let the possible implications of yet another van problem sink in, and the feel of overwhelm at everything in my life – and then let all that drift away across the lake.

When a few tears escape, I know they’re as much for the fortuitousness of the timing of the gearbox collapse (it could have been much worse), and especially for the kindnesses I find everywhere, as much as for the many challenges that this period in my life seems to be bringing me.

And then I arrive, and the little house resting there in its pool of sunshine makes me smile.