Le Blog: More Field Trippin'

Tuesday evening, my Writing About Place class and as many extra students as fit in the two transit vans made the thirty-minute drive over to Gordes, down into a valley where the Senanque Abbey sits nestled among trees beginning to turn gold and orange and red, alongside faded lavender fields that the monks cultivate in the summer. Every day at 18h00 (6:00 p.m.), the monks walk into the chapel for evening prayer, called Vespers.

Seven monks in white robes and socks and sandals filed in and took their places in front of the small altar of the minimalist chapel with its worn, gray stone, vaulted ceiling and unassuming, unstained glass windows. One statue of the Madonna and child stood aside from the altar, which had a stone crucifix and two small arrangements of thin branches with orange and yellow leaves.
When the monks sang, their voices filled the chapel and rung from the stone walls and ceilings. It was all in Latin and French, and the only part I recognized was "Kyrie." It was beautiful.

About a half hour later, the monks set their hymnals down and filed back out of the chapel through a side door. Some of the other visitors followed, and the eighteen American students stood awkwardly for a minute. Two of our more confident students walked piously through that side door along with the others. The rest of us started to follow, wondering if this were an exit or a second part of the ceremony. A balding monk with a white beard stepped in front of us and said something in French. He may or may not have been telling us not to follow, so we turned around and left from the door we came in originally, back out into the courtyard next to the path to the parking lot. The two pious students were nowhere to be found. So we waited.

The beginning of autumn colors were absolutely beautiful, and for the first time on this trip, I kicked myself for not having my camera. It made me want to sew small squares of green, gold, orange, and red fabric into a loose pile of a pattern, then quilt over it with stitching in the shape of tree branches.

Eventually the two missing girls came back with their extra blessing. They had accidentally followed into a silent, personal prayer room, and had taken a few minutes to muster up the courage to try to find their way out. Finally all back together, we boarded back up into the transit vans and made our way out of the valley and back to Lacoste, the Writing About Place students thoughtful about what they would write for their Vespers prompt assignment.

The next morning, the four Business and Professional Writing students tagged along with the Travel Photography class to Roussillon. We wandered around the ochre mines (ochre is used for pigment in paint and whatnot) and forests for about an hour, then met up in the town at a café for class.