What No Moving Box Can Hold: Saying Goodbye to Our French Mountain Home

Selling a house should be regarded as just a transaction. That, at least, is what one of our more unsentimental friends told us. 

He is probably right, actually.

Yet, as we packed up our now-sold townhouse in the mountain village of Antraigues-Sur-Volane in Southern France, we found that the cardboard boxes stacked in our living room were not really enough for the task. They were meant to transport objects, but we were trying to pack something else as well - almost twenty years of life lived in this place.

The real estate listing described our house as "a charming two-bedroom property with traditional features." It was not wrong, exactly. But it also did not come close.

This has not just been our vacation house. Over the years it became something more - a real home away from home, if that is not too strange a phrase. 

 

The rhythm of returning each summer made us feel, somehow, that we belonged here, at least a little.

Though we were never full-time residents, the village baker would greet us warmly on our arrival each year, and the neighbors would invite us in as if our intermittent presence had still earned us a small place in village life. It surprised us every time, honestly.

Our stays were precious. Time moved differently in this thousand-year-old town. Slower, maybe, or just more - noticeable.

 

Here in the narrow alleyways, our daughter played hide-and-seek with the local children until the evening light faded from the limestone walls. And through their play during the first summer, she learned to speak fluent French.

The days at the local river were glorious. She became more and more confident - swimming against the current, diving from rocks that got a little higher each year - and we found, eventually, the hidden pools further upstream, that the locals do not reveal to newcomers. We were quite proud of that.

The warm evenings were lovely too. The villagers gathered for pétanque just in front of our porch - the metallic clink of boules, the arguing about whether it counted, the laughter - it became the background sound of our outdoor dinners.

 

Our explorations of the surrounding mountains and villages built up into something like a personal map, one place at a time. Each summer added a little extra coordinates to it.

The winding drive to the village of Mirabel, perched on its steep outcrop, where time seems suspended between medieval and modern. 

And Labeaume, where the houses emerge directly from the limestone cliffs - as if the rock one day simply decided to become a village.

The chestnut forests below Mézilhac where we gathered mushrooms with knowledge borrowed from neighbors, and the terraced vineyards of Alba-la-Romaine running toward the horizon.

These were not places from a guidebook. They were ours, in the way that places become yours when you find them slowly and by accident.

 

And then there were the annual village banquets when everybody in and around Antraigues gathered in the town square. Long tables end to end across the full length of the place, loaded with food and local wine, and enjoyed by people who had known each other their whole lives.

 

The conversations with our neighbors would stretch well into the night, with the old buildings around the square lit by string lights and someone - there was always someone - eventually bringing out the accordion.

 

Now the house is emptied. The old rickety table on the porch stands there alone.

To the new owners it will just be a table. For us it is where we ate together after long summer days, and where we had the kinds of conversations that are only really possible when you are away from your normal life.

 

 

We know, of course, that the stone walls of Antraigues will stand long after we are gone, that other families will find the hidden pools, and that the accordion will sound at future banquets.

 

We find that thought both a little sad and also somehow fine. 

And with that, we close and lock the door.