Aftermath

It's been two weeks, and I still haven't driven the 3 km up the road to the point where the fire started. So while on an emergency cat food mission today, I decided to do a detour to visit. It's still quite startling to cross a sharp boundary between undamaged landscape and the fire zone. This is the very edge, about a kilometre out of Ribaute, so it's not completely carbonised. Another 5 km up the road towards Lagrasse, at a sharp bend in the road around a bluff, there's another sharp transition back to green. 

I noted that at the point where the fire started, a bunch of Sécurité Civile vehicles were parked and a group of people were having a conflab.  The most likely explanation is that it was criminal, but unless there was a witness (unlikely) the chances of catching anyone are practically zero. A couple of other photos: here and here. All the wooden telephone poles along this road were burned, and you can still smell ash and charcoal.

This evening repeat catsitter M arrived with her partner J, and we introduced them to Matisse. It went a lot better than trying to introduce Mystère to strangers ever did -- within ten minutes she was curiously investigating them and attacking their toes. We did a quick turnaround and went straight out to Mathias's annual bar éphémère in Ferrals-- a handy way of feeding M and J and also introducing them to people. It's been another cool, windy day and I was worried we'd be cold, but it was fine -- the garden is in a sheltered hollow. We didn't stay too late though, as we need to be up and off tomorrow.