We find the Dunière flowing through a small valley near Saint Pal de Mons. In Laval, it's cold and clear. It's also wider and more open, having just emerged from the gorges of the "Portes du Diable".
The happiest days of my life
The happiest days of my life were spent here. It was between 1968 and 1972. The valley was unoccupied, and I was its only inhabitant. An apprentice painter and nature lover, I called myself a hippie. The good people, you know "those who don't like anyone to take a different road from them", considered me to be a rather marginal weirdo.
From Pont de la Vache to Vaubarlet, the Dunière route was like a no-man's-land. I rented a small, uncomfortable house for 500 francs a year. Far from civilization, I spent my days drawing and roaming the banks of the river under the protection of an ancient Romanesque chapel. It was here that I caught my first trout on a dry fly.
And in the middle flows a river
Some summer evenings, I'd set up the hi-fi speakers on the sill of the wide-open window upstairs. I'd select the best Pink Floyd or Amon Düül II tracks from my LPs and stack them on the turntable. I'd turn the volume all the way up, and with a slightly dodgy cigarette at the tip of my lips, I'd set off on my movie adventure, in natural settings and on a giant screen.
At the foot of the Saint-Julien-la-Tourette chapel, a preview of "Et au milieu coule une rivière" was held just for me. In this grandiose setting, I went down to the river in jeans and Pataugas. Until dusk, knee-deep in water, I'd be on the lookout for the slightest gobble against a backdrop of psychedelic music.
Today, fifty years late, I apologize to the forest animals who must have wondered about the origin of this curious intrusion of sound. But this was an exception. And then, who knows? Perhaps they took the same pleasure as I did when, at dusk, they heard the chorus of "Atom Heart Mother" mingling with the song of the tawny owl and echoing in the forest mist that enveloped the valley.
