Once Upon a River

From Mouthier Haute Pierre to Pontarlier, 23.75 kms. The first six kms of track is closed due to land-slides last year. It is the stretch of path that takes the walker to the source of La Loue river. Our Alpinist host in Mamirolle could not be more emphatic about the ‘must do’ magical nature of just this bit of the road. Closed? How can it be closed?

The day before, you have met La Loue in her full glory in Ornans. On this sunny day the water is a mirror and the pretty little houses on the river bank can’t stop basking in their own reflected glory. All the eateries sell trout from the river – fish fresh enough to warm any Bengali heart.

A brief and charming walk through tangled woods and manicured parklands along the river gets you to Mouthier Haute Pierre.

Looking down from Mouthier, a tiny village clinging to one side of the natural amphitheatre of the surrounding Jura range, the Loue below is a naughty ripple at the stony pit of the mountains.

In the background the argument with my law-abiding Walking Buddy persists – to take the closed track or not to take it. He has this entirely inconvenient trust in bureaucracies: ‘there must be a reason why the path is still closed’; ‘rules are there to protect us’; etc etc.

Evening in Mouthier, the Track Angel intervenes in the form of a young walker a day ahead. She has just walked through the closed path. Nothing more dangerous here than a few fallen trees, says the angel in her Facebook post. At breakfast next morning another walker says that she is going the closed route. Decision made: we are going to the source of the Loue after all.

Down from Mouthier, past the hydro-electric plant which diverts 10% of the river’s flow to support the needs of the nearby populations, the path curls up past the closure and route diversion signs. And almost immediately it is too beautiful for words – my words that is, but there are always poets you can turn to.

‘I came to far for beauty/ I left so much behind’, sings Leonard Cohen. He was chasing an elusive woman. But it works for the long road (almost 900 kms) we have walked to get here.

‘Nyamperin matahari dari satu sisi/ Memandang wajahmu dari segenap jurusan’, says Rendra. He was talking about an elusive woman too. But that is just right for the mountains, all around us and impossible to photograph from the narrow foothold taking us up the river to where it all begins, and begins again and again, all the time, constantly, incessantly…the mouth of a river.

‘ব্যক্ত হোক জীবনের জয়
ব্যক্ত হোক তোমামাঝে
অসীমের চিরবিস্ময়’ says Tagore. He was writing birthdays, his own in particular. But it works most perfectly at the birth of the river. Where better to ‘hail the victory of life…the constant wonder of eternity’?

Afterwards, there are the creature comforts of crepes and coffee at the cafe a few hundred metres up towards a carpark. Then a long climb through the pine forrest on the way to our night’s stop in Pontarlier is pleasant enough. Though it all seems a bit pedestrian after a morning’s exhilarating encounter with a river. Just a morning – gone so soon – but what a morning! You have to be grateful for legs, language and life.

For all the track angels.