4.2 THE PHOENIX ALWAYS RISES

The situation was too unbelievable to be disseminated. We were angry and had come face to face with disaster. So what now? Should we run back to the States with our tails between our legs or go on?

Janus was gone but the experiences were unrepeatable, for as well as the major highlights there were thousands of small memories.

I have always loved the Scots and the Highlands and moor heather was my favorite flower so we took a train up to Scotland to recover.

We had a little saved and began looking for a place to live. After living in an unusual style we couldn't see our way to living in a traditional home. We made a search for mills, old railway stations and old churches.

We visited several which did not take our fancy then we encountered the perfect place. It was perched on a little hill which actually was a cemetery and marvelous old gravestones surrounded the church. No one at the time wanted it but it was perfect for us... well, almost perfect.

It had a large balcony on three sides for hundreds of people and magnificent stained glass windows and what was most spectacular was a grand organ with its tall  pipes. We immediately envisoned a theatre and since my varied past included that skill, we really considered it perfect. We went out of the church down to the bus stop. Just along the road at about a hundred yards was a small store and there was a fight going on outside it. It soon stopped and we walked down to find out what happened.

The storekeeper told us that they were local troublemakers and asked who we were. We told him that we were considering buying the curch. "Great," he declared. "You have a lot of guts, because you are sassenach (English) and in a week all your windows will be broken."

It was goodbye that idea. So back to Devon.

What next? Travel? Certainly, but how?

Spending time visiting Plymouth, we called in at an auction and the answer was there, for two sport bikes were put up for bid. It was natural solution. For ten pounds each we had solved the problem of how.

But where could we go.  Ninette spoke perfect French, I poorly with an English accent. So a tour of France was an obvious choice. Our idea was to travel through France looking at the chateaus. With an added impulse , I planned to visit Pouancé on the Loire, the home of a young Frenchman, Roger Bachalier, that my father had befriended, which I had visited on an adventure alone as a young child.

So off we went on the Brittany Ferry on the two bicycles which forty years later we still have, cleaned up and painted carefully.

The Casual Tour of France 

Our Janus was gone with all our possesions, photos, clothes, everything except what we had travelled to Plymouth with. We had made two pannier bags which we fitted to the bikes to contain a pup tent and whatever else we needed.

Once in Brittany, landing at Roscoff we made our way southward on the Rue de Mun with little traffic and all were respectful. The first day we battled out fifty odd miles to reach Gourin. Ninette on that first day made her final sacrifice. The weight was too much to transport for her on the hills, so away went the last of her spare clothes which she left at the foot a stone cross at the roadside.

Brittany is a region with its own rugged magic and after several quick adjustments to this new way of life we reached Gourin. How, I don't remember, but we encountered a large area which was an old abandoned slate mine. Within the large mine area there were numerous houses, each with stone walls and a slate roof.

We had the same idea. We could perhaps buy it and make this large tract our new home and use the many houses for some project. We contacted the owners, a large slate mining company at Angers. They wanted to sell. The only problem was that there were no roads, light or water.

In the town we met a man who had a friend who was a water dowser. We had heard of such a skill, but frankly did not believe for a second in the truth of such skills. He came up to the site and taking a hazel branch cut it into a two pronged fork and then walked around finally telling us that he had found a fount of water.

Our faces must have told him that we were not believers so he said that we should try it for ourselves and that perhaps we too had the skill. Ninette tried and the hazel divining rod twisted downwards in her hands. I did the same and the force was immense. In a few minutes we became believers.

We decided to buy the slate mine and prepared to cycle down to Angers through Chateaubriant to sign the contract, for we could visit Pouancé, which was just a few miles away.

It was a calm ride to Chateaubriant with great changes in the landscape in such a short distance. The French accepted us with open arms as bicycle heroes, for although at that time the French were great fans of the bycicle, few made large voyages and apart from that Ninette's exquisite and cultured French was a boon. Never at any point did we encounter resistance to our camping pleas.

At one small town the mayor even came out to where we had pitched our pup tent with a gift of wine and cheese. From then on our main meals were marvelous French bread, fruit and cheese.

Our visit to Roger and his family after many many years was a great success and with them we cycled to Chateaubriant for a guided tour of the Chateau.

Then on to Angers to sign the contract. But when we arrived, something had happened, during the days we had taken traveling down within the offices of the company. They decided not to sell.

With stoicism, a little disappointed, we continued, and within Angers visited the great fortress built by Famous King St Louis in the 13th century ,with seventeen round towers made of dark schist and white stone...

We reinforced then with the idea to visit Chateaux of France where we could. On this voyage, with many little adventures here and there, was forged for Ninette a new vision of the world.

A few of the chateaux are shown below

Chateau de Challain

Chateau de Azay-le-Rideau

Chateau de Chambord

This was the grand vision of kings, but in and around these castles lived and breathed ordinary people in ordinary villages with hearts and dreams really greater than any king.

For example, at one point we encountered one of the French regional tour competitions (not the Tour of France) and were befriended by a pair of competing brothers, ordinary people with a dream. No deception at all. Others of course are greedy monsters, but still there are many with open minds and hearts. Those we met on this voyage, not the kings and queens.

It was the ease with which one can make friends without pretense, without masks and without false social culture that she had discovered while with Janus among boat people and now reinforced here in the small villages of France.

Simple uneducated people can accept you more easily for what you are than what you seem to be. That alone is a magisterial lesson. Poor people do care.

The brothers let us in on a trade secret. It was that when one of these unimportant tours passing through someone's small home town, they generally allowed the person born there to win. Caring does not require education or social learning. Other-directedness lies within every human creature if the blanketing Identity is removed.

Without haste we then visited memorable Chateaux of the Loire. It was a romantic ride through the past. The Loire Valley is known as the Garden of France. It was the favorite residence of Kings of France during the Renaissance period. They made this peaceful countryside the setting for their dreams and from that was born the Renaissance in France. The Loire is the "the world of a thousand castles."

We visited Chateaux like that of l'Aubriere, constructed in Napoleonic style, Azay-le-Rideau and many more. Then  we cycled across to Bordeaux and down the coast through the Regional Natural Forest of "Landes de Gascogne".

Most of the region now occupied by the Landes forest was swampy land that was sparsely inhabited until the 19th century. In 1857, reforestation changed  the landscape. Prior to this period, the people of the Landes, mostly shepherds, used stilts to move from place to place in the wet terrain.

Now it is dense pine-land. There we spent time with the new population, among them those that cut the notches in pine bark to collect the resin. Once again we were received with interest and kindness. Poor people, rich hearts. Perhaps today that has all disappeared, but the lasting impression was made upon Ninette and myself.

It is remarkable how easy and pleasant all becomes when you have no ties to society, few possessions, no haste and no long-term plans.

It was an important lesson for Ninette to understand that there is a natural drive within every human creature to live within the world without desires and without clinging.

The First Brief Glimpse of Spain

The weather had been perfect and we crossed the French border into Spain.

We met few eople. On one very long hill on the way to San Sebastian, too steep for the bicycles, we encountered torrential rain and were drenched, but Ninette laughing with rain streaming down her face plodded on to the top.

We pitched our pup tent in the rain and camped there.

The following morning we continued, damp, but still riding happily on with un-dampened spirit.

Immediately we met the famous Guardia Civil with their historical hats. We knew nothing of Franco or Spanish history at all. But it must be said that we were received with a salute and gentlemanly courtesy. Our first impression was completely positive.

He led us along the road to a small bar and there we dried out completely, before moving on to San Sebastian.

We rode into Constitution Square looking just as you see it here. Wet, deserted and without life. It was our first impression of Spain.

It was as though here had been an atomic bomb warning, Not a person could be seen. We sat under the arches and ate our bread and cheese from France... Suddenly about an hour later voices could be heard. Quiet at first then becoming a veritable crescendo, and the square became flooded with people.. So many walking and chatting that you couldn't see to the other side.

We had encountered the Spanish siesta, long since destroyed under the onslaught of modern enterprise and demands.

We left for the countyside after absorbing the hustle and bustle, which was not exactly what our customs of silence within nature for so long could endure.

Outside San Sebastian we had a choice. We could stay in Spain and ride to Madrid where we had a friend from New York University days, Rita, or go on down the coast through Portugal. We chose the latter, and if I remember correctly, Rita met us in Lisbon.

Revolution in Portugal

There was no problem entering Portugal and we hit Lisbon in April fourteen, days after my birthday, in 1974.

We knew less about Portugal than we did about Spain, except that both were run by a dictatorship. Politics was no concern of ours, although I had been an anarchist since youth.

It was, unknown to us, the day of the Revolution.

We were in the midst of a Revolution that  would be historically remembered as the "Joyful Revolution of Carnations."

At 12:25 AM the signal was for the Revolution to begin was given by radio as the  rebel song, Grandola, Vila Morena, by José Afonso was played on Rádio Renascença. We were in Lisbon's main square at the time.

The dictatorship of Salazar and Caetano collapsed when a military coup unleashed a revolutionary tide of mass working-class action. After 50 years of repression, the people burst onto the streets. The workers took over factories and land.

 Eight armored cars and ten trucks moved on the capital. Other divisions under the command of mid-ranking officers of the the "Movimento das Forças Armadas" (MFA – the Armed Forces Movement), were mobilised. The 5th Infantry Regiment took Rádio Clube Português, transmitting the first MFA communication at 5:30.

Workers, farmers came out on the streets in their thousands, and troops  sealed off access to Lisbon and secured the second city, Porto. Resistance in Lisbon only came from the secret police, but they were besieged by angry people at their headquarters. 

The streets were already thronged with people and we were among them. We were within a group that moved towards Commerce Square and found ourselved beneath the great bronze equestrian statue of King José I, in the centre of the square. Everyone waited expectantly as the crowd got larger and larger.

At 8 PM the MFA announced that the regime had been deposed.

All MFA armored vehicles were mobbed by the crowds. Carts filled with farmers had come into the capital and joined us in the square. Red carnations, which became the symbol of the unfolding revolution, blossomed in rifle barrels, and flooded the streets in the hands of joyous and crying crowds.

It will be difficult for those who have never experienced such events to grasp the significance in one's life of actually participating together with all classes of people, when money and greed, and work and relations are forgotten and all people rise together in a common compassionate union.

I will give you an example of one incident probably occurring all around us.

Rita in the crowd, that was immense, was standing beside Ninette. She stepped back and an old lady behind was pushed down to the ground. The woman cried out in fear. Around her were her family, daughters, sons and grandsons. Normally such an action would have brought cries of outrage, anger, remonstration and all manner of bad feelings. In this moment instead there was human solidarity. They helped the old woman rise as we did and the relatives joined with us, not against us as foreigners.

Anger and greed had no place and there was a true human solidarity and joy among us that was contagious...

It was another indelible lesson for Ninette on what lies hidden within people when Samsara is forgotten... Days later the joy and flowers began to fade and Portugal did not retain the real fruits of the victory the people had gained: an inner sight of the unified Life Force in operation with full gladness, compassion and benevolent affect.

One can listen to all the discourses one wants and read all the books available, but is only the experiences which generate true modification and changes in human behavior in the direction of Natural Dharma. It was a privilege for both of us to be present.

Still affected by the experience of Lisboa we went slowly out along the beach route and saw that these remarkable beaches were fully contaminated by refuse, plastic bottles and bags and all sorts of debris. The environment was completely contaminated and the stench of rotten dead and dying fish sometimes was unbearable.

It was a great disappointment. Later with the tourist influx this was all to change for the better. Why does it take filthy lucre to make man's mind only turn to correct action -of course, correct action for wrong reasons?

Finally we rode east through Albufeira, Faro and Tavira and entered Spain once more. Quickly then we rode to Cádiz and were on the Ferry with our destination the Canary islands.