A Night on a Bare Mountain

Mist. Chestnut leaves. A flash of a nun's white habit. Arbutus bells. A growl in the night. Provence at her wildest

I’ve had a small private ambition for years: to spend a night beside the old hunting cabin hidden deep in the moors above Le Lavandou and near the monastery of La Chartreuse de la Verne. It’s the most romantic little structure used by hunters, perched in the pines like something from a Russian folk tale. I tried to reach it a few weeks ago, only to find the way barred by a newly locked gate on vineyard land. (That lock, incidentally, gave me an idea, but that’s for another day.)

This time, I was determined. I slept in the van in a nearby village and set off at first light. The forecast promised one last soft evening before the northern cold begins its annual descent. Perfect timing for a night on my own Bare Mountain.

The climb to La Chartreuse de la Verne is fairly gentle, but I floated up it. Either I’m fitter than I was during the Normandy–Loire stages of my walk, or I’m simply a creature who thrives on inclines, but the 18 kilometres and 600 metres of ascent passed without difficulty. It’s amusing, really: some of those long flat days were absolute purgatory, yet this felt like a stroll.

A lighter pack helps. I’ve finally admitted that my roomy two-man tent is wasted on me. I never linger inside, I don’t spread out, and Youna, when she sleeps, becomes a perfectly spherical black pearl curled against my leg. So I’ve switched to a Durston X-Mid 1 that weighs barely 500 grams. My shoulders feel as though I’ve shed a medieval curse.

Add to this a cheap, featherlight tablet and keyboard for working on the road, and I’m inching towards the ultra-light pack weight of the true gram-shavers. I won’t be sawing off toothbrush handles since comfort still matters and I have a portable electric one, natch, but I’d like to get my total weight down to seven or eight kilos. A dreamy thought.

The forest itself was a revelation. Chestnut groves, ridgelines sweeping open, and the comforting knowledge that several springs were marked on my map. Only one was running, as it turned out. But I was lucky: the functioning fountain sat just below the monastery.

La Chartreuse de la Verne appeared through the late-afternoon haze like an apparition; a golden stone galleon hovering on the ridge. As I knelt to fill my bottles, a nun stepped out of the mist, her pale habit caught by the wind. She greeted me softly, in a lilting foreign accent. Many of the monastics these days are from elsewhere; the original French orders were suppressed during the Revolution, leaving only a few revived enclaves like this one. They now sell pomades, pottery, and trinkets to the brave souls who navigate the narrow road up.

I left them behind, climbing towards the cabin. On the way, I encountered a walking group of about twenty-five older hikers who had, inexplicably, scattered a dozen hard-boiled egg shells across the ground. I grumbled at the time. Later, I understood too well the consequences.

The cabin was in even worse shape than I remembered. The stone is loose, the floor littered with wine bottles, and the whole place feels a little unhinged, as if it has absorbed one too many midnight celebrations. I didn’t dream of sleeping inside. But I was grateful for its leeward wall while I boiled water for dinner and watched the world dissolve into vapour.

And then the night began.

A thick mist rolled in. Wind snapped at the tent. The forest went black and strange. In Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain, there’s a moment when the shadows start to mutter to each other, an unease that grows a spine. That’s exactly how it felt: the world holding its breath.

Around midnight, something large – very large – approached my tent. Heavy steps. Slow breathing. Sniffing. And then a sound unmistakably like a low growl. Not a grunt. A growl.

It circled for nearly an hour, sometimes near enough that I could hear its grunts and growls vibrating the night air. My money is on a dog – a big pastoral guardian dog roaming between shepherding duties. Or a wild boar, but I’m reliably informed that they don’t growl. But at that moment, alone on the mountain with mist in my face and Youna stiff and silent beside me, it might as well have been Mussorgsky’s demon raising his head over the ridge.

I lay absolutely still, listening. Waiting.

Eventually, the noises faded. The night exhaled.

At 7 a.m., I emerged, fog-damp, relieved, exhilarated. The world was a watercolour: cloud wrapping the peaks, trees ghosting in and out of view. The photos look almost staged, as though some Romantic painter cooked them up after too much absinthe.

On the way down, the wind was blowing a hoolie, and together with the mist, it created quite an atmosphere. The chestnut leaves are burnished yellow and orange now, falling fast and sticking to the path in soggy mosaics. All along the track, the arbutus shrubs are in their full dual-season oddness: tiny creamy bell-flowers dangling among round red fruits that look enticingly like strawberries but taste, to me, like damp cotton wool. The locals adore them; I remain mystified.

Still, their blossoms and berries, alongside the grey-green mosses and lichen, formed a kind of fairy carpet beneath our feet as we wound downwards. Every so often, the sky lifted, and a pocket of calm opened in the trees. I’d stop there for a snack, listening to the wind roar above while the forest around me held its breath. I feel a strange sweetness. The feeling of having passed through something, even if only a night’s brush with the unknown.

Till the next time.