Paris rush hour and a delayed train from Gare du Nord had me arriving in Pont Sainte Maxence two hours late. 8:30 on a Friday night is not an ideal time to arrive in the French countryside with a stuffed backpack, a limited French vocabulary, and no car.
I was eager to reach my destination, the familiar chateau in Sacy Le Petit, where I had worked in the garden almost exactly a year prior. I was eager to see the peeling sea foam green shutters, step into the cool smell of the house, to flop into the embrace of a hammock strung between two trees... After traveling for a couple weeks through new environments, it was finally time to settle into familiar spaces and routines, to return to this house I had developed a fondness for a year ago.
Pont Sainte Maxence is the largest (a term used loosely) town in an area made up of villages and farming communities where rows of crops stretch in green expanse between the clusters of small stone homes. While only three and a half miles from Pont Sainte Maxence, it's not easy to get to Sacy Le Petit. A bus runs a couple times a day, but my tardy arrival had caused me to miss the last bus for the night. A taxi idled near the entrance to the train station and I attempted to string together a request for a ride. The taxi was already booked and waiting for its passenger and, despite the efforts of the driver, I discovered that taxis in this part of the world were more pre-hired car than on-the-fly service.
So I walked. The sun set as I tramped along the highway, first consulting Google Maps before abandoning it to rely on my own memory of the route, recalling Hermine's crinkled map of the village with each house drawn as a tiny square. I ended up wandering into a rainstorm, which soaked me for the remainder of the journey, but I was glad to be somewhere known.
My time in Sacy Le Petit was almost like reliving the previous summer. I pulled the same stubborn weeds from the same areas of the garden. I sowed seeds into earth mixed with compost. I sat on the hammock and devoured books.
In the center of Sacy Le Petit is the church. A bell tower extends towards the sky, each of its sides bearing a clock. From behind the walls bordering the chateau, the tower is visible and, from the places when the clock face hides behind tree branches, the tolling of the bells can be counted every hour and half hour. Time has an inescapable auditory and visual presence in Sacy, but for me the joy of this place is the timelessness I feel when I'm there. At home, free time is a scant resource and since it is limited, it's precious. I often find myself fretfully thinking about what I'm doing at every moment of these free days or hours. "Am I using my time efficiently? Am I just wasting time? Could I be doing something else, something more useful?" With this mentality, projects and checking items off lists feel like accomplishments of mastering time, while reading a book becomes an unaffordable leisure.
Yet, at Sacy, similar to my family's cabin, time may be ever-present, but it is less consequential. Getting up in the morning, I'd eat some breakfast, put out the bag on the front gate for the bread delivery, and work in the garden- weeding, sowing seeds, clearing new plots of land for future crops. Midday, when the sun shouted from its high point in the sky, I'd rest or read or write, savoring this "idle" time. With no obligations beyond the garden, I could simply enjoy the passing of time and spend it without pressure.
This sense of passing time manifests itself not just in the tolling of the church bells, but in the light. White hot rays scald the earth in the afternoon. Golden light laps the fields as the sun finally begins to dip and eventually fades into pastel swirls of pink and purple as dying light mingles with the clouds. The day goes by and the light changes and time passes without judgment.