The Mistral

“Mistral-Proof Provencal Weather Vane”  Cassis Center, France: 02/10

Taken while enjoying Cassis Rose at an outside cafe, with perfect company, staring at the sea, and trying to ignore the screaming children.

The Mistral is a serious wind that dominates the lower portion of France. While she clears the skies and is responsible for the incredible number of sunny days here in Provence, the Mistral has her devilish side as well.  In the warmer months she passes through stirring up fears of sparking fire in the arid terrain, and in the winter she forces her way into your coat or down your chimney and chills to the bone.

Perhaps this is the reason that the area is speckled with sturdy stucco homes that hold brightly painted heavy wooded shutters…Protection from the Mistral.  Even our local resident Dog is affected, some late nights she joins me in my bedroom for comfort from threatening noise of the snapping branches and these shaking colorful shutters the Mistral tried to push from her path.

After half of my time here in France has passed, and I look back and reflect, I can’t help but compare my days here to the Mistral. I see that I fit as comfortably in this house as Mistral does in this region, and like the Mistral, my time in Provence has not only delivered sunshine, but bouts of broken branches as well.

Love Rach

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 2:24 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.