FRANCE


Walking with huskies from Base Nordique Sherpa in Peyragudes


mountains and those who graze animals there. Penny works with a local organisation that teaches farmers how to better protect their animals at night using dogs and electric fences. It’s a familiar tale in the 21st century: the challenge of getting nature and man to coexist harmoniously. Nicolas busies himself preparing a typical lunch of the


mountains, laying the spread on a stack of old pallets to form a makeshiſt table outside his hut. He talks little. The hut itself is tiny, its bare-stone walls concealing a pair of rooms easily filled with his few pots and pans, gas stove and mattress. There’s no electricity or running water, not much of the 21st century. For a moment, I wonder at a young man’s choice to spend solitary months on the mountainside, but as we tuck into crusty bread and ruby-red slices of duck while the sun shines over the valley, it all makes better sense. As we mop up the last morsels, the tinny clunking


of cowbells reaches our ears, faint at first, but growing louder as dozens of cream-coloured cows emerge along the track. “Only the ‘queen’ cow wears a bell,” Éric says. “When the shepherd finds the queen, he knows the rest of the herd is there too.” There are four or five queens here; several herds have joined forces. They form a huddle a few metres away, chewing and staring at us while we chew and stare back at them. “I’m an old man,” middle-aged Éric announces, out of


the blue. “Pyrenees people are the oldest in Europe,” he goes on to explain, proudly, telling me that his ancestors came from the Iberian Peninsula at a time when much of the rest of the continent was covered in ice. I understand why his mind has turned to the past; the modern day doesn’t have much of a hold on this moment in the mountains. He breaks into song, a long-ago song about


the Pyrenees and its people. Nicolas joins in and the cows look on. Somewhere, Goiat is listening.


Happy days In the days that follow, I become more and more conscious of the past ghosting into the present. Driving winding roads, through trees turned autumnal by this deathly dry summer, I chance upon an abandoned cottage with an empty doorway and windows gaping black. An old mill stands in the middle of a cut cornfield, its roof splintered and falling in. On a wildlife walk with Éric through a valley at Piau-Engaly, marmots whistle warnings and griffon vultures circle overhead, but it’s a disused shepherd’s hut that holds my imagination. Overgrown with nettles, it’s been here for two centuries, built tight against a looming boulder to protect it from avalanches. Such decaying buildings appear fleetingly, thrown


up by the landscape before being swallowed once more, but each time they do I find myself strangely sensitive to the lives that have been lived inside — the meals eaten, the arguments held, the families raised, the problems pondered. I can only half-grasp these imagined memories, as though viewing photographs in dim light. But there’s no looking backwards during my morning


with Happy — when you’re harnessed to a 45kg dog it’s very much full speed ahead. Keen to see more of the countryside, I’ve come to Base Nordique Sherpa in Peyragudes, a husky training centre that offers walking tours through the forest. “To say hello to your dog, put your hand under its muzzle and then make hugs,” advises Elodie, who has charge of the 37 huskies, each with its own wooden kennel beside a stream. “Be careful with the big ones, though — when they make hugs they can knock you over,” she warns. Happy is certainly a big one; she’s a


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