And they shall lift you up in their hands

Jumping into the lake at Ardeche gave me just a few seconds to wonder at how bright the sun on the lake was and how cold the water would be before I broke the surface. We jumped until it was too cold to carry on, and then went back to sit by the fire and try to shake the water out of our ears.

We see indistinctly, as in a mirror

Halfway through the summer we hitchhiked across France to Ardeche, where we stayed in the middle of fields full of wild thyme, ate peaches every day, and fell asleep in the afternoons. One day we travelled to a huge lake surrounded by towering rocks, where jumping from the greatest height became a competitive sport, avoided only by floating in the lake upon impact for the longest possible amount of time.