Pioneer Living, Old-World style

Readers about my age must surely remember the TV series “Wagon Train.” It was one of the formative viewing experiences of my youth, and though I didn’t like shoot’em-up westerns, I loved watching the Conestoga wagons trek across the plains and mountains of the American West.

On “Wagon Train” there were families, which meant children, and the show allowed me to experience the journey through their eyes. Another detail sticks in my mind: girls were just as courageous as boys, and big or small, everyone did their part to survive. Go West, young woman. That seemed to be the motto of the show.

At night, I pulled the sheets over my head, turning my bed into a prairie schooner. Peeping out into the darkness, I imagined Chimney Rock, the Colorado River, the snow-capped Rockies. I also sensed the dangers of the trail: “Indians,” as we called them then, but also wild animals, rattlers or scorpions, and shortages of water and food. Participating in the journey through imagination, experiencing beauty, danger and adventure, I simply couldn’t understand why my parents, or their forebears, had never heeded the call.

I did. I went to California, albeit by jet plane, to study, not to homestead. I landed in Los Angeles, a quick trip into the future for a girl from Pottsville, PA. The Old West was buried beneath concrete and asphalt.

But that did not stop me from trying to dig it up. In 1976, to commemorate the bicentennial, I dragged my mother and two sisters onto an Amtrak train we boarded in Union Station in LA (they’d flown there for a visit). In 48 hours it was going to deposit us in Harrisburg, after having unfurled at ground level the beauties and wonders of the continental United States.

That was the program. Things did not go as planned. The train broke down in the Arizona desert and we sat there for hours. No air conditioning, intense heat, crying babies, passengers in panic. No one in my family would speak to me.

When we finally made it to Saint Louis, we changed to a local making every stop on this side of the Mississippi before it finally reached Harrisburg, nearly 90 hours after the trip had begun.

That was my transcontinental trek, inspired by “Wagon Train.” My family hated me for it, but I enjoyed the adventure. That may be why I ended up in France, a truly long trek that has finally provided me with a taste of “pioneer life.” Who would have ever imagined (certainly, not me!) that I had to return to the Old World to discover what conquering the New was like.

At this point in my adventure in “la France profonde,” heartland France, I call myself “pioneer woman” and wonder for how long I can keep this up.

To give you an idea of “a day in the life,” it all starts very early. I get up in darkness and pull on several layers of warm clothing, first my “woolies,” a pair of wool panty hose and a thermal undershirt, then a heavy sweater and a wool scarf around the neck, topped by a sweat suit ordered especially from Iceland, where they know something about cold. A pair of socks, fur-lined slippers, and I’m ready to go.

Then it’s time to make the fire. Every night I let it die down and go out. Every morning I start all over again. First, I remove yesterday’s ashes and clean the ceramic glass door of my wood stove. I clean that glass every morning, wetting and balling newspaper, dipping it in ash, and then scrubbing away. This leaves my nails caked with soot, but it gives me a beautiful view of the flames, the best entertainment in town.

Once the stove is clean I can build the fire, using the top-down method and fire-starter squares—I don’t know what I’d do without them. Sometimes it takes two or three tries to get it going, and once the flames begin to rise, I’m never far away. At the onset, my fire requires care and pampering if it is going to last all day—as it should, as it must. Wood fire is my main source of heat.

Working hard, my stove is always hungry. For me, this means numerous trips each day to the woodshed in my garden. I fill a heavy-duty bag and lug the wood to the house.

When my morning chores are done, I can finally eat, and I’m hungry. Now I can understand those big cowboy breakfasts of hot biscuits, gravy and beans. I also need a couple of cups of strong black coffee if I am going to make it through the rest of the day.

Part of it I spend sitting at a computer, something pioneers never did. Yet I am also in my garden, still, in January, living off the fat of the land. I’m harvesting winter salads, broccoli, Brussel sprouts and sorrel; and down in my root cellar, my supply of potatoes and beets will hold me through to spring.

To top it off, I live in a house I’ve ‘built’ (with the aid of local craftsmen). I have become a homesteader and that home still requires work. During the Christmas holidays the plumbing backed up, and the French take holidays seriously. Tracking down a plumber was like searching for the Northwest Passage, except that I was not battling ice.

And no pioneer experience would be complete without skirmishes with the natives, animal and human. I’ve had chiggers and been attacked by fire ants. A small house next to mine is abandoned. My contractor suspects it is infested with rats. He tells me to be careful when I feed the birds, or I’ll have rodents in my courtyard.

As for the humans, it’s an uphill battle. A foreigner, an American no less, a member of that nation whose founders were not satisfied till they’d grabbed an entire continent, has come and laid claim to a piece of the local “patrimoine,” their heritage. Until she took it, nobody wanted it, but now that she’s fixed it up, things have changed.

We all know “how the West was won.” It took generations, and I’ve only been here two years. In the village of Condé sur Huisne, I’ve staked my claim, but will it hold?

Just like “Wagon Train,” this is one episode in a series and the show has just begun…