Saint-Denis

North of central Paris, almost at the end of the No. 13 Metro line, there is a cathedral that rivals the more famous Notre Dame for medieval grandeur. I first read about this church in my Western Civilization class forty years ago. It is almost the first, truly Gothic cathedral, built by the famous Abbot Suger in the 12th century. Unlike Notre Dame, however, it is not crowded with tourists jostling each other to snap photos, making it a delightful Saturday outing even in July.

Once, the church was an adjunct to a great abbey, but the French Revolution swept all of the cloisters away. One of the two towers of the facade crashed down in the 1800's, giving the building an endearing, lopsided look. You can see how early it is--there are no flying buttresses like the lacy extensions on Notre Dame that stretch out from the exterior walls like air roots. St. Denis is an altogether heavier building. It does not, like Chartes, appear ready to leap into the sky. Neither is it a dense, earthbound Romanesque church, squatting possessively on its foundations. It is visionary, but without all the details having been worked out yet.

Because it takes so long to complete a true cathedral--more than a hundred years--you can see the 13th century innovations superimposed on the the basic design. If you go into the crypt, you can even see the few remains of the Carolingean church, dating to before Charlemagne in the 7th century and at the very bottom, the 4th century Roman basement where the remains of St. Denis and two other saints once rested. Medieval pilgrims used to walk a circuit around the tombs, sometimes on their knees. Their pennies enriched the abbey and allowed Abbot Suger to build his dream.

Inside, the basilica has become a repository for the tombs and cenotaphs of French royalty, going back to Dagobert, a Dark Ages, Merogovingian monarch. As royal lineages died out and Capets followed Valois--sometimes militarily--they brought or created their predecessors' funeral monuments to St. Denis. It was a way of proclaiming that the new regime was the legitimate successor of the old. It is roughly similar to modern American political parties laying claim to being the "true" inheritors of the principles of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or the ancient Roman kings claiming descent from the hero, Aneas. It makes for odd juxtapositions, like the thoroughly High Medieval sculpture of Clovis and Charles Martel, who lived 300 hundred years earlier and certainly never wore the elaborate mail and jointed armor their images depict.

It doesn't stop at the Middle Ages. Louis XVIII, almost the last, faint gasp of the Bourbons, had two, life-sized statues of his brother and sister-in-law, the doomed Louis XVI and his foolish wife, Marie Antoinette, placed in the cathedral in very pious postures. He was underlining his descent from the Ancienne regime, although it did him little good. His brother, Charles, succeeded him for a few years, but monarchy was dying in France.

It was fascinating to roam among the various monuments, some elaborate, some humble, and realize that Sainte-Denis is France's lumber room of rulers, a kind of funeral attic. The centuries are jumbled together; glorious medieval stained glass next to garish, 19th century "restored" windows. Renaissance doublets mix with Medieval curt hose. It's all a glorious confusion and gives history a very human face.

And on top of all of that, there is that gorgeous light, pouring into the cathedral from the windows.

Darwin's Test Tube

"Iconic," you read, when you bone up on the Galapagos.

"Amazing."

"Stunningly beautiful in a stark, primitive way."

It's all true, of course. The Galapagos are all that and more, but what struck me like a zen stick alongside my head is how trusting, how positively confiding, the animals inhabitants are. They appear to have little or no fear of people. A Galapagos Mockingbird hopped right up to my foot on Genovesa Island as if I were some interesting new tree. It then proceeded to accompany my group of bemused, fellow-birders for fifty yards, hopping beside us or leading the way until finally losing interest.

On Santa Cruz Island, three-foot-long Marine Iguanas lay unmoving as we carefully walked around and between them, piled on the sand like a collapsed huddle of footballers. A male Galapagos Sea Lion challenged us to the extent of walking toward us on the shore until we parted to let him pass, whereupon, dominance established, he threw himself down in our midst and streched langorously. On Isabela Island, the endangered Mangrove Finch perched 18 inches from us when our guide, Peter Freire, played its song from an iPod. A Floreana Mockingbird from the Island of the same name landed on my friend, Martha's, head! Everywhere we have sailed in these enchanted islands, it has been the same. The animals are completely nonchalant at our approach, even when we are within a few feet of their nests. It is almost unnerving how relaxed they are with us.

Of course, Nature suspends her laws for no one. We saw a Short-eared Owl casually snag a Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel right out of the air when it flew fatally close to the owl's perch on the lava. One nip of its bill on the back of the neck and the Storm-Petrel was dinner. We watched Magnificent Frigatebirds, those pirates of the air, swoop down repeatedly on Green Sea Turtle hatching in the sand in the late afternoon son. Virtually all sea turtles are endanged, but in the Galapagos, they are protected only from human beings and other introduced species, not from their natural preditors. I doubt that many hatchings from that nest survived to reach the ocean.

Darwin's Test Tube, this hot house of genetic drift, has not changed much since the Voyage of the Beagle in 1835. To survive here, animals must be able to out-compete or out-run their neighbors. We, the aliens, are not the enemy because, mercifully, we are not allowed to be, but that is not the same thing as being protected from the law of the survival of the fittest. Magnificent Frigatebirds, Short-eared Owls and Galapagos Hawks have to eat the same as Mangrove Finches and Green Sea Turtles. In the end, it's not about the survival of the individual, but the survival of the species. It's something we Homo spapiens would do well to remember.

A Moveable Feast

The ants are coming! The ants are coming! Far from striking fear into the hearts of birders, army ant swarms are longed-for events because they bring out the antbirds. Army ants, contrary to the 50's adventure and horror movies of my youth, do not consume everything in their path, such as cows, horses and the occasional tourist. They are out for insects,larvae and invertibrates, although if the odd egg or infant bird falls into their path, well...that's another matter. Their prey will naturally try to escape, leaping, flying or running as fast as it can, only to fall victim to the various antbirds that specialize in following the swarms.

Last week, my friend, Martha, and I, along with six other birders and our guides, encountered one of these ant swarms crossing our trail. Within a few minutes, we went from seeing a few columns marching across the mud to a generalized melee spreading across the rain forest floor. In their midst, dozens of bicolored and ocellated antbirds were dancing about, swooping down on caterpillers and other, many-legged creatures trying to escape the enslaught. The bicolored antbirds' strategy was to perch horzontally about a foot off the ground on twigs and vines, scouting out the ground below, and then diving for the scurrying insects. They would flare their tails in excitement before they dropped like raptors onto the kill. The ocellated antbirds had a different and more methodical approach; they poked at the leaf litter, tossing it aside ruthlessly to expose the fleeing bugs and pounced on them. Occasionally, there would be a brisk exchange of territoriality and the ocellated antbird, a weightier opponent, would chase the bicolored antbird away.

We watched the show in fascination. The antbirds were beautiful and terrible and innocent. They blindly addressed their own need. Once, a plain brown woodcreeper appeared opportunistically to take advantage of the harvest. The ants spread out across the trail like water spreading from an overflowing tub. Then, slowly, the swarm moved off into the deep brush and the streams became trickles. The antbirds followed like pilot fish snatching morsels of food from the mouth of the shark.

We always think of Nature with a capital "N" as motherly, benign and all-knowing. Seeing the ant swarm and the camp-following antbirds reminded me that it's small "n" nature, clever, thrifty and unsentimental. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is safe. Nothing is predictible.

Panama City

There could hardly be a greater contrast than between Paris and Panama City! I'm just back from a morning 's birding the grounds of our comfortable hotel beside the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal and the esplanade along the water's edge. Magnificent Frigatebirds glide above like a dozen black-and-white kites. Orange-chinned Parakeets chatter as they egg-beat their way across the skies so clumsily that they look as though they might fall at any moment. The air is filled with bird song and construction hammers and salsa music from portable radios and casual shouts or greetings from the hawkers and taxi drivers who work the hotel district. It's tropical chaos.

Tomorrow, eight of us depart for Burbayar Lodge in eastern Panama. Other than my friend, Martha, I haven't met any of the other birders, but we will get together tonight for dinner. It's always fun when bird nerds meet. Lots of tall tales of birds seen and birds missed. We are all hoping to see a particular bird for our Life Lists. For some, it's Panama's national bird, the Harpy Eagle, which has a seven foot wing span and snatches monkeys from the canopy for dinner. I'm hoping to see the shy and lovely Agami Heron, which skulks along the edge of forest streams. My experience is, however, that what we see is unpredictable, but always fascinating.

Last year in western Panama, we saw the stunning, Lattice-tailed Trogon and missed the common, Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher. We repeatedly saw a Three-toed Sloth, which has the blank visage of a cartoon character--somewhere between Mr. Bill and the smiley-face emodicon. There's just no telling. Not knowing what is coming next is part of the fascination. So much of our lives is pre-programmed and scheduled. In the rainforest, everything is moment-to-moment. Maybe something wonderful is waiting around the next corner of the trail. Maybe nothing lies ahead but heat and mosquitos. You just never know. It's not television. You can't TIVO it and replay it at a more convenient time. As Aldous Huxley once wrote, it's "here and now, boys, here and now." And really, what could be better?

Il fai froid! Saturday in Paris.

It's cold! I went for a ramble in the 5th arrondissement today and had to stop and buy another scarf to double twice around my neck just to keep the wind out. The 5th is Les Jardines district, named after the Botanical gardens east of Notre Dame on the Left Bank. It's at the very edge of the old Roman City of Lutece, but more about that later. My main goal was the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle or National Natural History Museum. My Aunt Margaret, a seasoned and delightful traveler, recommended it to me and such a chilly day seemed like the perfect opportunity for an indoor browse.

It's a wonderful space, a late Victorian fantasy of high ceilings, balconies and wrought iron banisters that twist themselves into stems and flowers and buds so organically that you can almost see them leaning toward you as you climb the stairs. It's a long building filled with skeletons--more or less modern on the first floor and ancient on the second. Giraffes tower over musk ox, yak, lion and turtle. Elephants and rhinos with wicked tusks and horns crowd whales, including the complete skeleton of an enormous southern right whale. I stood close to it, awestruck and thinking of the time I went out on a sail boat with my friends, Joyce and Tony Maycock, in Puerto Madryn, Argentina. Some curious right whales sailed right under our keel! They seemed pretty impressive at the time, their eyes rolling upward as they checked us out, but now that I can see exactly how big they were...well, I'm glad I didn't realize then that they were longer than our vessel by about 10 feet!

This was nothing to the second floor, however, with a full-sized apatosaurus. Okay, brontosaurus for those of us who grew up reading Roy Chapman Andrews' stories of his dinosaur-hunting expedition to the Gobi desert. And speaking of Andrews, who brought his own silver and china and changed for dinner after the long days' digging, I also saw a couple of Protoceratops andrewsi's eggs in a case. It was a strangely moving moment to see something I had read and been thrilled about when I was thirteen or fourteen. Until Andrews, the proported real-life model for Indiana Jones, discovered these eggs, no one had been able to prove how dinosaurs reproduced. It was a little bit of scientific and yet still quite romantic history before my very eyes.

I wandered about the district for awhile, discovering a carrousel with a carved dodo to ride on, long allees of polled trees leafless in the January cold, and the grand mosque of Paris. I had lunch at the latter in the blue-tiled courtyard, dining on a lamb tagine under a heater. The place was hopping with Parisians of all faiths and flavors, so I think I stumbled on a local secret. The tagine was terrific and the waiters were fatherly. I was seriously tempted to try the hamman or baths, as the prospect of an afternoon of steam was very appealing, but I heard the call of Roman ruins.

Now Roman ruins to me are a bit like catnip to my cat, Izzy. I just can't resist. I had read in my trusty guidebook that the remains of the old arena were not far away. Sure enough, after only two blocks, I came upon Rue de Arena, a promising development. Sadly, however, there is not much more than the footprint left. You can see where the sloping tiers of seats rose on two of the four sides of the oval floor of the arena, although only one small section still holds seats instead of a grassy slope. It is small; particularly if you have ever seen the arena at Arles or Nimes. It needs all of your imagination to visualize crowds of Romans and Franks pushing into the seats, vendors selling food and drink, and gladiators and animal handlers performing in the pit. Joggers trot through and families pushing prams take the short cut between streets. Rome and Lutece, the Roman name for Paris, seem more distant than the mammoths in the Natural History Museum.

I finished up the afternoon with a stroll down the Rue Mouffelard, ending at the 15th century church of St. Medard. Rue Mouffelard runs along the edge of what was once King Phillip Augustus' city walls. (Think Timothy Dalton as the handsome, young King of France in "The Lion in Winter." I'm sure the real Phillip looked nothing like him, but one can dream.) As it slopes toward the Seine, it becomes crowded with specialty shops selling cheese and chocolate and pastries. (I succumbed to a macaron framboise or raspberry macaroon. These are nothing like our cocoanut lumps, but consist of two outer layers of merange as light as an angel's breathe surrounding a thin, intensely tart layer of raspberry jam. Need I say more?) There was an open-air market at the bottom of the street in front of St. Medard. The church is famous for being the 18th century site of spontaneous healings preceded by strange convulsions and religious ecstacy, but today it is as quiet and restrained as a dowager wearing Chanel.

I stepped inside the late gothic church and immediately found myself in the middle of a christening. A baby boy was being initiated into the faith and not caring for it very much, snuffling and squirming in the priest's arms. Everyone was singing and the music, unpolished and beautifully authentic, filled the vaulted ceilings. Other visitors, intent on prayer or lighting candles, scuttled past and I joined them in a side chapel. I could hear the service continuing, understanding just enough French to realize that the congregation was now singing the 23rd Psalm. It was lovely to get a glimpse of Parisian life that did not involve restaurants or museums or shops--just a family coming together to celebrate the arrival of a new member.

Last Tango in Paris

No matter how stressful the work may be on this assignment, Paris is always a good idea. I stole that line from a really bad remake of "Sabrina", but it's still true. Walking today through the 4th Arrondissement, I passed tiny little medieval streets that miraculously survived the many clearings since Napolean, including Rue Nicolas Flammel, for Harry Potter fans. It was rainy and the usual black and gray sported by fashionable Parisians was allieviated by brightly colored umbrellas. I bought myself a vase at Au Printemps, the enormous department store, and red tulips in the Metro, so my room suddenly looks like a residence instead of a hotel. Assignments are what you make them.

Last Sunday, I went to the incredible Musee d'Orsay. If you love impressionist painting, this former railway station-turned-museum is the Omphalos, the world navel. Never will you see such a combination of Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, Cassett, Morrisot, Boudin and Gaughan, including some iconic pieces like my very favorite, "Olympia." I turned a corner and there she was, the reclining nude with her African maid behind her bringing in flowers from some admirer. She looks directly out of the canvas, however, at the viewer: bold, assured, challenging. This was painted in the Victorian era when people covered chair legs out of embarrassment and any nudity in a painting had to be covered in mythological allusions. These sanitized nudes looked like pink-and-white china figurines, all coyness and unreality. Olympia surveys her audience directly and without shame. She is the first intimation of a modern woman. "Olympia" was so shocking to the Establishment that Manet's painting was refused at the yearly Salon.

Turn another corner and you will see Seuret's wild, pointillist vision of a circus, the colors jumping out at you like the acrobats. On another wall hangs Degas' "Ironers", their hands at the small of their backs or rubbing their necks, a bottle of wine at their elbows and stacks of laundry yet to do. You can feel the heat coming off the painting. Monet's haystacks and the cathedral at Rheims at all hours, Toulouse Lautrec's seamy Moulin Rouge denizens--it's all there and more. Spend a couple of hours at the Musee d'Orsay and you'll fell as if you've been immersed in the demimonde of the last half of the nineteenth century. There's nowhere else like it.

Unlike today, it was a clear day and I strolled back along the Seine. Black-headed gulls rode the river or perched on the canal boats moored below the quay. The trees were still bare, turning the sky into Mondrian's leaded fragments. I'm in Paris, I thought, but I kept running into familiar faces. Thomas Jefferson stood on the Left Bank at the edge of the bridge to the Tuilleries, his bronze knee britches and lace jabot very correct for his tour of duty as our second American ambassador. (Ben Franklyn, that old roue, was the first.) Down the river, a tiny Statue of Liberty decorates the bridge below the Eiffel Tower. I looked up river to Notre Dame's two, square towers and remembered that Shakespeare and Company is still directly across from the cathedral, selling English language books just as Sylvia Beach did when Hemmingway used to cadge a couch at night. Paris is woven into our history and our pysche like the Frontier and the American Dream.

Paris in the Winter

It's just past ten o'clock in the evening on my first day in Paris and I'm running on adrenaline. I arrived to a very gray and wintery city, as you can see from this photo of the park in front of the Musee Marmatton where a wonderful collection of Monet's paintings, particularly the last, almost not-representative water lilies, shimmers from enormous canvases. I'm writing from my hotel lobby, the only place in the hotel with free WiFi to the accompaniment of rather loud, Jim Morrison tracks from the early Doors.

I can't say that I'm loving this hotel, which is about six miles out of the city center and was a 12 Euro taxi ride to and from the Monet Museum. It's comfortable, but the area is industrial, grim and under what appears to be permanent construction. With the somber weather, it's a bit depressing. It's not even close to the project offices; I have to take a bus because it is outside the metro radius! Not acceptable! I'm told, however, that there is a hotel with kitchenettes right across from the client's offices with a negotiated Fluor rate of 100 Euros, as opposed to the 99 Euros here, so I think I'll change in a day or two.

The winter in and of itself, though, is rather nice. The trees are quite bare, so you can see their structure in the parks, like bones in a huge x-ray. People are wrapped up in jackets, wooly hats, mitten and scarves--mostly black. Good thing I stocked up on black and gray clothes. I was asked for directions twice this afternoon, so I must fit in better than I expected. Until, of course, I open my mouth.

I had a charming, slightly rowdy dinner with seven of my team members tonight at a local bistro--fois gras du canard avec pommes. Why does everything sound better in French? The dish was absolute heaven, but I think it wouldn't have been quite so like an angel's kiss if it had been labeled sauted duck liver with apples.

I'm taking advantage of my day off tomorrow and trying to decide whether to go to the Louvre or the Musee D'Orsay. Either one would be superb, but there's this amazing restaurant at the D'Orsay, so .... I'm already reminded of the journal I kept when Keith and I first came to Paris in 2000, "France on 5,000 Words a Day." I had meant to write about all of our experiences, but when we reread it, we realized that we were mostly writing about the food.

C'est la vie!