And so any return to experiences or places of the past is fraught with the danger of disapointed expectations and moments of melancholic reminiscence.
I've done a vendage in France before.
A pair in fact. Experiences so rich and unique in their intensity that I arrived for my 3rd with some misgivings and fears that I was chasing a phantom, trying to re-find something that no longer existed.
I came scared that I would find only the disapointment and sadness of a fading memory, retreating into the fog of the past.
But all is in the doing of things. In the embrace of the moment in front of you.
And there is little so vividly satisfying to embrace as a vendange.
What else can you do but throw yourself into it?
A collection of people brought together by an openess to the new, a seeking desire, fondness for the road and shared experience...
and their embrace of each other fueled by the collective experience of hard work, humour, food, drink and 2 weeks of unbroken proximity.
Jokes spring up and evolve.
Relationships ebb and flow and strengthen.
Laying languid on sundrenched lawn... talking crap over a cheap bottle of local red... eating meal after meal after meal... bending back-ached over vines with grape stained hands... singing, under dew-soaked vines in the pre-sun morning... bouncing around beaujolais roads in the back of vans like mexicans across the border.
Perhaps every vendange IS different.
As different as the people that come to share them. I will never recapture those fondly remembered moments of the past, but in the last 2 weeks I have greedily filled my cup with new ones as vivid and beautiful, and will guard the memories of those moments, those people, those unique shared experiences as jealously as any in my life.
... more to follow.
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