FIRE

The column of smoke rises menacingly before me. I am in the car, but I do not think being inside the vehicle protects me much, even though I felt safer travelling inside my capsule. My toughest enemies, however, are my thoughts. I have not stopped fighting them all along the way: work, meetings, paperwork, etcetera. Leaving home was not what kept those thoughts apart, but the great fire which broke out south of Marseille and caused all the roads to the city to be closed. If those thoughts are no more is because they have been substituted with a more preeminent one. I have to be on a ferry bound for Corsica tomorrow at noon, and there is no other option than this.

I don’t care if I have to drive all day; I will head inland towards Avignon and then back towards the coast if need be. I’m willing to take the long way around, I have no idea where I will sleep tonight or if I will get any sleep at all, but I maintain that I will be in Nice tomorrow. So I steer the wheel with one reference only, the north. This way, the road is closed; that way, the police only allow access to those who need to go to the hospital. Where should I go? Heading for Avignon would mean taking too much of a detour… I risk it and opt for a narrow road that crosses the French countryside.

The grey line, the yellow of the vegetation and the blue of the sky are the colours that melt in the uniformity of the landscape. I will spend hours contemplating this palette. Left, right, up, down… I have lost my way, and the GPS sends me straight to the flames. Seagulls! There are many of them, and they flee in the opposite direction to the sea. Switch to neutral, and reverse, I pick up speed and take the path the birds show me. Enough wasting mobile data. So I manage to avoid the roads that lead to Marseille and arrive in Nice, hours later, but I made it.