A Year on Monona

"The Luberon sounded different in spring. Birds who had been ducking all winter came out of hiding now that the hunters were gone, and their song replaced gunfire.  The only jarring noise I could hear as I walked along the path toward the Massot residence was a furious hammering, and I wondered if he had decided to put up a For Sale notice in preparation for the beginning of the tourist season." A Year in Provence







For us, these are the last days of Quarry Lane – a bright and beautiful shell of a home quickly losing all of the stuff that makes a home a home.  Waiting for us is a new library, a river, and a set of new neighbors that are fast becoming as interesting as those encountered in Mayle's travelogue of the Luberon in southern France.

We are very thankful that the river waters right outside our new condo are calm and kayakable, lined by a usable beach and the sky busy with cranes and bald eagles.  The Black River is great water for local kayakers who don't want to have to pull themselves quite so intensely against the wind as out on the main channel.

The Moorings bay turns and outlets into a wide pocket of the Black, skirting along the shoreline to the east. Although a bit loud by the highway along this stretch, it is as picturesque as images of a Louisianna bayou. Wide, upturned trunks and windy brush, sometimes exposed and sometimes deep enough to paddle over, the backwaters are an ever changing maze of biology.