I have never been to France, but I have pictures of Provence in my mind, a gentle, amber light, lavender fields stretching to the horizon, stone farm houses overlooking tidy vineyards, all of it beneath a cloud-flocked sky. I imagine Provence as a place landscape artists do their best work and perhaps it’s all cliché, but that’s what came to my mind as I left work Friday. We’ve had a cloudy stretch lately, long enough that even though the day dawned sunny and humid, I could distinguish a difference in the light. It still feels like summer, but the sun has softened, become less intense now that we approach mid-September. As I drove through my small town toward an afternoon of editing at a table in the library, the subtle tint made me think of farmers in straw hats threshing by hand, a stone jug of water fresh from a well, a wooden wheelbarrow filled with just-picked blossoms. I am no geographer, but I wonder if perhaps due to its location, the light in the South of France is similar all year to what we get here, in September?
