Summer Sojourns

Stimulate Your Senses With a Change of Scenery

Summer being the traditional time for les vacances when I was younger, it also meant going away somewhere, whether for a few weeks to my grandmother’s house in rural Alsace, a summer job in Austria, or relief work in Yugoslavia. Whatever the itinerary, the point was to be closer to the season, not to escape it. I came to the custom of a beach holiday fairly late, first on the Riviera (not as glamorous for French people as it sounds to Americans), then as an exchange student on Nantucket with my adoptive American family. The latter was a much more exotic experience, in terms of both landscape (sandy beaches, not the norm in France) and social anthropology.

There is a point to travel that is very much like the point of seasonality: it helps our mental organization of time, breaking it up, and makes our overall experience seem fuller. As nature designed us, our senses perk up in any unfamiliar setting, trying to take everything in, feeding information directly to our so-called reptilian cortex, a vestige of a time before we had mastered our surroundings and needed to be watchful for dangers and potential meals. For this reason, Chianti at home doesn’t taste the way it tastes in Tuscany. Lavender bundles even at the Paris markets don’t smell like the air in Provence. The play of the light in Miami is one glory, the play of the light in the Alps another. A change of scene is good for us because it gives all our senses a new world of stimuli to react to.

But not everyone seems as clued in to the importance of this phenomenon to overall health. While the serenity of the beach makes it a vacation destination I love—nothing is more meditative than the sea, and a walk along the edge of the surf is the most pleasant of exertions—I have met many women of all ages who think of it as an occasion to lose consciousness. “I just want to veg” is an expression I’ve heard countless times from hardworking people explaining their beach holidays from mindfulness. True, modern living gives us too much to think about, and the world is changing faster than we can make sense of it. The antidote, however, may not be to stop thinking but to think of something else. Being lulled into oblivion by tropical drinks and drowsy heat may not furnish nearly as much rest or renewal as we can be tempted to imagine. It’s just a respite. Occasionally, ça suffit (it’s enough). In general, though, time away is better spent immersing oneself in something different—a landscape, a culture, even a different language, and, bien sûr, a different cuisine. You don’t need to trek through the Atlas Mountains or bobsled to the Arctic. But a sense of place and time—of journey—is vital for me. My years feel fuller for having been marked by incredible moments in unimposing places: an out-of-the way little restaurant in southern Sicily, a small temple near Kyoto, an inn with an aspiring chef in the Massif Central. In such circumstances, gluttony never occurs to you. There you simply feel free.

As I say, it doesn’t have to be exotic, just consistently stimulating. For the past fifteen years, since we first started to rent a house in Provence and especially now that we own one, summer has increasingly been centered on one place. But it’s a place of such intensities that for us it remains an undiscovered country: the heat, the crickets, the lavender, the most bountiful markets, the most mesmeric sunsets—truly a world full of inspiration. Provence is, in a way, my summer state of mind, the dream of perfect abundance and peace that abides with me year-round. It’s not hard getting friends to visit us, although some wonder why I do it so regularly, since taking good care of people can be hard work. Actually, I find it stimulating to help other people relax. My only demand is that they surrender all handheld devices—at least telephonic ones—when they cross our threshold. Some city friends really have a hard time and truly don’t know how to relax. But once the mind is engaged, once we call their attention to this little wonder and that small miracle, the spirit follows.