I am getting old. The reason I know this is not the wrinkles or the aches and pains, but that I have discovered landscape.
Landscape was a word that used to make me switch off as soon as I heard it. I found people droning on about land (yawn) scape was about as interesting as my cleaning lady detailing the benefits of one type of bleach over another. My husband and his great friend Simon used to talk about it endlessly. They even wrote a book about it, which I did manage to read but only because it was about wine as well.
Now I am a convert. I finally get it. And I can’t believe how blind I have been.
This has not been a gradual process. I arrived in France ten days ago and on a walk to the top of a hill to look at the house I suddenly realised that this place is ASTOUNDINGLY beautiful. Now I just can’t stop appreciating it. I have become a landscape bore. A born again landscape follower. Everywhere I go I gaze at the colours, the contours and the contrasts nature has created. I just can’t believe it has always been there and I’ve never really LOOKED at it. I suppose when we lived here it was just home and that was the way it was. It probably also helps that I have spent the last five years in a place where the landscape consists of sand, more sand and oh there’s some sand.
Whatever it is I am thrilled to be a landscape lover, even if it has only come at a certain age.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2013
Do you now consider the history? I often look and think: what army went there, which peasant skived here and how many bawdry, lazy girls have had an afternoon’s fun before me.
Now I’m going to be even more obsessed! I did once, while running up a hill, imagine that Rafa Nadal was behind a bush at the top of it. Does that count? x