France: turn right, or: one journey leads to another

the first time we came to the french moutains was by - rain. the real plan for that trip back then had been: drive to Austria, spent some days in the Austrian Alps, then cross into Italy, and drive to the North of Italy, with its lakes and mountains. only that it started to rain there the day after we arrived. and not only there: a rain front had moved in, covering half of Italy and most of Austria. the best escape place seemed to be: France. so we drove westwards, through the rain front, crossed the border, and arrived in this region here: the Hautes-Alpes = "high alpes", with a string of mountain crossing that is connected by the "Route des Grandes Alpes". and grandes it is, indeed.

so we keep returning, taking the direct way. the photo above is from Thursday - it's the autobahn of Switzerland, near Geneve and Lausanne (and Lac Léman). if you look at the road sign, you can see "France" noted there as destination.

the second picture is from today, near Col du Lautaret / Col de Galibier. they turned a large part of the area into a "Parc national" now. i followed the walkway for a while, then stopped to read the next pages of the book i brought: "The Accidental Masterpiece - On the Art of Life and Vice Versa" by Michael Kimmelmann. it was one of the recommended reads listed in the "Spiral Jetta" road trip land art book, and i ordered it back then 2nd hand, not knowing how well it would connect to this trip. the third chapter is about .. the mountains of Franc, and the definition of beauty. it's called: "The Art of Having a Lofty Perspective". here's a bit:

"Nature, for instance - the Alps, Mount Fuji - nature is beautiful. And people have always thought so, right? Wrong. In fact, our modern attitude toward mountains - to what we consider their natural beauty - is a matter of conditioned learning, inherited through literature and theology..."

and so, one journey leads to another, and one book to the next, and in one of those happy coincidences, the roads and the books connected here, along the route, while time turns relative. it's kind of hard to believe that i was still at home 2 days ago.