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I quickly understood that I had better pack up my gear and get outta there real fast. This wonderful spot on the river that I decided to explore, rapidly became a no man’s land.

A family dressed like “northern” tourists had installed themselves; their little girl started operations by throwing their dog, an ugly poodle/pekingise bastard, into the water from the high embankment.

“Look at Gallipette everybody, look how well she floats!”

The poor mutt, she must have swallowed two liters of water; one could barely make out her nose above the water and when she reached the riverbank she glared at the little girl with a glint of murder in her eyes.

Not having the taste for gratuitously spilled blood, I started back upstream by a path that I must have taken a hundred times in my life as a fisherman, but who knows what was going on in my brain that day, instead of following the well-beaten path that goes into the woods and turns left after the big fallen poplar, I turned right and in less than five minutes I was completely lost.

Even today, it’s still a mystery, that one can go astray in such familiar terrain. The fact remains that on that day my sense of direction, which isn’t generally brilliant, drove me into a veritable nightmare.

There are thickets that one can navigate with one’s eyes close. And there are others, next to which, the labyrinth of the Minotaur is a joke for young girls from good families.

A heap of brambles, of claws, of sharp blades, of fallen rocks, the earth giving way underfoot, webs of sticky greenery, all of this crap was ganging up on me and, suddenly, I was encircled, snatched, immobilized, vandalized, beaten, taken hostage by what some idiots call, without understanding: “Mother Nature”.

“Mother Nature” my ass! There I am cornered, paralyzed. Impossible to make the least movement without getting, instantaneously, a cruel, lacerating and savage lesson.

It was then that I realized that I was imprisoned just a few feet from a ledge that overhung the river inlet where another family of vacationers had set up camp.

The father, plunked on a deck chair held, in his hairy arms, a fishing pole and had just pulled a sort of white fish (that resembled a salsify, but more inert) out of the water.

You would have thought that the poor beast was paraplegic and that the cruel hook had violently ejected him out of his wheelchair.

“Holy cow, Marilou, look here at this beautiful beast! Damn, she really gave me a hard time. You can put the frying pan on the fire; tonight we’re going to pig out.”

At that moment the kid started to whine: “mama, I need to make caca… My stomach hurts!

The mother shook herself out of a semi-coma due to her full-body tanning seance and screamed at her husband: “Shit, shit, shit you bugger! Gilbert, I told you not to buy that frozen seafood tart at “Findus”, it’s fucking crap… Go Andre… go to the river and make caca. But don’t go so far that you’ll drown yourself.  If you’re dead, I’m not going to go looking for you!”

The kid didn’t have to be told twice and stayed a few meters from their camp; one could see him concentrating on his task. In effect, very quickly a few nuggets, easily identifiable, emerged and gathered, floating next to his back.

The poor kid wasn’t in great form with those funny labels stuck to his back. And the more that he advanced in the river (trying to escape from the brown shame) the more the shit seemed to follow him like a hunting dog following his master.

And then, that that will arrive, arrived. Probably the fault of a traitorous slippery stone, but the kid disappeared into the river, body and soul. Without a word. No more kid, simply swallowed up. There was nothing left but a few nuggets of shit floating with the current.

The fearless mother (these things really are maternal!) didn’t even take the time to put on her Tong and there she was pulling up the floating vegetation while screaming “Andre… Andre… Where are you, you little ball-breaker?”

When, finally, she pulled him out of the water by the hair, hiccuping, her “Andre”, she still had the force to scream at her husband: “My mother warned me, you dumb jerk, and I clearly told you that we’d be better off renting the trailer at the “Lavandou” campsite, like last year; but no, you wanted to come to the shitty Ardeche!”

It was at this moment, after desperate efforts, that I finally liberated myself from the murderous clutches of the brambles.

When I arrived at the house my darling wife shrieked: “My God… just look at your face! What happened to you?”

It’s true, my face was carved up with scratches, still bleeding… traces of my misadventure.

My wife, listening only to her civic inner voice, took over with a bottle of mercurochrome (a tenacious and indelible liquid) and armed with a ball of cotton, dabbed it all over my face, thinking that it was the thing to do.

It’s been over a week now that  shamefully, I have been reclusive… away from the mocking looks of my fellow citizens; I continue to resemble a war chief tattooed by an ancient tribe of Ardechois cannibals.

Now I spend the better part of my time in the kitchen, peeling unneeded vegetables, death in my soul.

(I forgot to mention that I forgot my brand new fly rod in the thicket of nightmares; I have instead, taken to classical dance.)