#reverb10 Challenge Day 3 - Moment
December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).
About the author: Ali Edwards.
This year has been full of great moments but the one that stands out for me is a bit of wild swimming in the Gorges de Galamus.
It was a hot day. One of those days when you can smell the tarmac melting on the roads. Solid blue skies. Crazy cloud formations. Cicadas signing their hearts out.
We head out of the Fosse valley and down through the nearest town of Saint Paul de Fenouillet. Faded buildings and roaming, free-spirited dogs in the streets. The cafe in the square is full of local boys with sun beaten faces drinking coffee the colour of mud. Too early to grab a cheeky Pastis before they start work on the vines? Unlikely. I notice that their cigarette-rough Catalan drawl is getting easier to understand.
We stop to grab picnic provisions. Fresh, warm and pointy baguettes, salty dried ham from over the border and a melon that smells like sunshine.
After driving through the gorge, we park up and start walking back to a place I know where you can get off the road and into the water. I fight the acrophobia all the way. It’s a long way down. Pesky vertigo makes me want to throw myself over the edge and I wobble a bit. We scramble over a wall and slide down the shingle and shale heading for the river and the deep, bright pools below us. If you look carefully you can see the fish circling.
We find a spot under a leafy tree and discard shorts and hats and sunblock. I smoke. Pete smokes. Then the water beckons.
It’s deep and cold and like an electric shock. It’s incredible.
We jump and dive and splash. We muck about. It feels like being six again. Everyone is smiling; great big fat smiles. Then someone decides to climb up the rocks. I think it’s Pete. Anne follows. Clare takes photographs. I climb. Then I stand.
And then I’m a scaredy cat. I can’t move. I can’t jump and I can’t get down again. There are rocks in the water below. In another land where health and safety runs riot it would be signposted Slippery when Wet.
And then I do it. And it feels good.
