QUARANTE VILLAGE PARK WITH PICS

Our little village of Quarante has a small grocery store - the kind that's called a Mom and Pop operation in the States. Mom's always there. I've never seen Pop. Whenever we drive out of Quarante to head for one of the surrounding towns with  more comprehensive shopping opportunities, an ATM (Quarante doesn't have one.) or a gas station (Quarante doesn't have one.), we pass a little park. There's a broad lawn - dogs not allowed - and just a few benches. So our curiosity was piqued when, on our way back from our walk to the cemetery recently, we came upon a sign that we hadn't seen before pointing the way to a different park on the other side of the village. We decided to explore.

The road to the park led through a lotissement, the French word for a housing development. You see, the French don't choose to bulldoze farmland in order to build houses or commercial centers. Their zoning laws (or the French equivalent thereof) essentially require that new housing be built on ground adjacent to existing villages where the necessary infrastructure can handle the growth. The result is compact growth dotted amid broad swaths of greenspace. Oh, those tricky socialist bleeding hearts.

But still with our American experiences in mind, as we walked up a hill past relatively new houses with relatively new cars parked out front, we imagined that the park to which we were headed was built for the youngsters in the neighborhood replete with playground equipment and, perhaps, a soccer field.

We were wrong.

I'd guess that the village bought or otherwise reserved the hilltop park property some time ago, perhaps decades before the lotissement was built. The pavement ends after the last house. A wide gravel path bordered by iris and other plantings winds up to the crest with two or three widely spaced streetlamps to light the way at night. At the top, a couple of benches look out over the village and adjacent vineyards, quite a view given that the park is on a level with the church and the mairie, always built on high ground in these little villages. And that's that except for what appears to be an informal fire pit for those willing to drag combustibles up the hill for a bonfire. Nothing fancy. Just a spot on high ground to catch a breeze on a hot summer night while you hug your honey.

We're SO happy that we live here.