By Elisa Novick
I hope you will take a little while to see my photos on Facebook of the places I’ve been traveling in Europe. I am not a photographer and my camera doesn’t have much of a zoom or an optimal viewfinder, but I do like to record my experiences and the photos illustrate some of what I will say here.
Before I left for Europe, I asked several people for suggestions as to their favorite places for me to visit and some of those places I have been to and others I did not have time for. Sometimes, I would find that I was in one of the recommended places, brought by my loving guides, but hadn’t been aware I was there (like Viviane’s suggestion of the 7th Arrondissement in Paris, or the Jordaan in Amsterdam), which was fun.
Though there was so much I hadn’t seen yet, it was a relief to leave Paris. I thought it was because I had such a rough landing there, but when I came back through after being in Burgundy, to change train stations, I once again felt an energy that felt hard to me and hard on me.
The high-speed train to Chalon-sur-Saone showed me a countryside so well-ordered, with large mono-cropped fields and a few perfectly spaced uniform trees here and there that serve no function I could discern, that I laughed when I saw a row of cows standing in a field in a perfect line. They were all cream-colored like the buildings. But driving with Barbara from Le Creusot to Chalon, I saw something very different, beautiful old farms and villages (Buxy was stunning) on rolling hills with proper hedgerows and a diversity of plants and farm animals.
In California wine country, I had felt the pain of grapevines crucified along wires, not allowed to tumble as is their nature, yet for some reason, I felt no pain in these vineyards. As it happened, we had an organic vintner, Kristine, in our workshop, who explained that the grapes are grown differently here and don’t suffer. I didn’t understand her explanation, but my experience bore out her words.
Le Pinacle is an old manor house owned by a Swiss German couple who bought it sight unseen, led by Spirit. Annette and Willy keep it not just physically, but energetically beautiful. After an initial protective, worried response by Annette, they so appreciated that we could feel and honor their work. It was sparkling clean and the food was delicious.