With my backpack packed with water, bread, and a jar of nutella... My little naive explorer self was ready to conquer Mt. St. Vicky with Victoria and Sydney. We unknowingly chose to hike the mountain the same day ALL of the other kids in the institute chose to hike the mountain. So as you can imagine, getting 25 people on a bus that only seats 15 people was not exactly the most pleasant experience. After politely pushing my way through the crowd to ensure myself a seat on the bus, I sat down and eagerly awaited our journey up the difficult trail, since we couldn't get a seat on the bus that would have taken us to the easy trail.
As we pulled up to the mountain, a girl did make me giggle after she exasperatedly exclaimed in a ditsy voice "Oh myyy god.... like how did Cezanne paint that?? It's like sooo intricate!" I don't know. It was like so intricate.
We got off the bus around 12:30. Victoria Sydney and I broke off from the group of 20 something American girls, and started climbing up, up, vertical up. There was no trail... we made our own... when people asked us what trail we took, we just responded with... "the animal trail." At one point we had to pull each other up a boulder, at other points we climbed up on our hands and knees. The intensity of our animal trail made us laugh, of course we made the difficult side of the mountain more difficult than it had to be.
We bummed around for a while, took pictures, ate nutella sandwiches, aimlessly hiked for 2 hours, THEN we decided that we wanted to reach the cross, on the peak of Mt. Saint Victoire. Clearly this was very wise decision. ahem. Sydney figured she wouldn't be satisfied if we hiked the mountain and didn't make it to the highest point. Victoria and I agreed. Two hours later... I'm making snowballs outside of the church at the top of the mountain. No not really, but there was some snow on the ground. The closest thing to snow I've seen since leaving the states. Jealous? I know.
My legs were going to fall off, I was certain that my lungs were going to collapse, I was sweaty and light headed. I was out of shape. Once I reached the cross I toppled over, and a french woman said "Bon nuit." The view was absolutely breathtaking. We were in the clouds. It's easy to forget how much sky and how much land there is, but at that moment I could see everything. The spectacular snowy alps seemed not so far in the distance, small towns began to light up around the mountain, lakes and ponds scattered here and there, so much green and so much light. The atmosphere enveloped me and I felt peaceful. At this point, it was five at night...
We started to make our way back down, when a handful of french people started, not just quickly walking down, but RUNNING down the mountain. We couldn't figure out if there was some mountain beast that we didn't know about that came out after dark and savagely murdered people by tearing out their throats... but we soon figured out that it was just the dark they were running from. The sun set, it became pitch black, and we were hours away from the bottom of the mountain.
We decided to take a different trail home. The easy way home, which was more flat and didn't require navigating in the dark on our hands and knees. At this point we were using Sydney's cell phone to light up the trail and look for blue marks. Finally, our luck ran out and the trail diverged into two different trails. I picked one on a whim, and we followed it for an hour. It was close to 7:30 at this point and we were walking AWAY from where we wanted to be-- the base of the mountain. We reached a field and decided to walk towards the closest light, which looked miles away. Then we decided not to. Then we decided to turn around. Then we decided not to. This way. That way. We couldn't make up our mind, and almost started to panic. Suddenly, a bright light approached us at a high speed. An angel appeared. 1) He was on a bike. 2) He spoke perfect English 3) He was not fazed by three girls lost in the middle of a forest at night 4) He knew the area well enough to give us exact directions (up down up down, take a left when you reach the highway) 5) He pulled out his phone with internet to check the bus schedule to tell us there was one bus left that night 6) He wished us good luck and went off on his way. Dumbstruck we continued on our journey.
It was starting to get chilly. We felt like we were in some terrible horror movie. We wanted to eat our warm meals in our warm french homes. It was a little past 8 when we finally reached the road and this was when we realized we were miles from the bus stop at the base of the mountain. Mt. St. Victoire looked relatively small from where we were. How did we get so far away from it? We began our 3 hour hike back towards the mountain... That's exactly what we wanted to do in that moment, walk towards the mountain!
We gave up after 45 minutes of walking, since there was no way we were going to make it to the bus stop in time. We called a cab on the few free minutes Sydney had on her phone, and sat outside of somebody's house. My whole body was aching, but I was so exhausted I felt numb more than anything. We waited silently, too tired to talk to each other. Minutes later, a bus drove our way. We jumped up and down ecstatic, pleading, waving our arms for it to stop, and it did. We hopped on the bus, thanked the bus driver hundreds of times. We were so grateful and so relieved to know that we would make it home that day.
I made it home around 9. My family applauded when I stumbled through the front door, interrupting dinner. "Eat first, then I talk," I laughed.
Mt. Sainte Victoire, I can not wait to paint you, you crazy hunk of rock.
