Years ago, I joined an international pen pal site to practice my German with a native speaker. For a year or so, I wrote to a guy living in Stuttgart until he got a little creepy and started sending underexposed photos overexposing himself. Then my profile lay fallow at the pen pal website until a British, nature-loving expat in the French Pyrenees noticed my handle, “naturewench,” and started up a correspondence.
This was in late 2016 when Trump was first elected. So politics was the main topic at first, but sharing thoughts about our own corners of the world soon followed. Kit, short for Christopher, lived off the grid with a whippet on the side of a mountain in Saint Lary near Spain. He was a tree hugger in every sense of the word. As a tree surgeon, he was always climbing to ridiculously tall heights. A Ducati motorcycle enthusiast, he tore through mountain roads at 90 mph and wrote articles about his adventures biking through France. In his youth, he had biked all the way from NYC to San Francisco, in awe of the scenery along the way.
After being pelted with eight months of breathtaking photos of the Pyrenees and watching a video that his niece had filmed of his daily life as an introspective mountain dweller, I decided to visit him. It would be my first time traveling solo internationally. My coworkers were horrified that I would cross the Atlantic to visit a dude who might murder me after fetching me from the airport. (They still joke about it today). Even the doctors I worked with were wary of my decision. But I’d caught a little of Kit’s adventurous spirit, decided that he was trustworthy, and boarded the plane. I promised my friends I’d keep in touch to prove I was alive.
There’s a cozy group of British expats in the Ariège Department south of Toulouse, and they all seem to know one another. One evening, Kit drove us to a mansion covered with pink climbing English roses. All the guests were British and sat outside at a very long table for dinner. One of the guests commented, “We all know that Kit is a lovely chap, but how did you know coming from Ohio that you could trust him? That was risky!” Everyone laughed.
One day we hiked up Col de Portet d’Aspet and wolfed down a picnic at the summit with stunning views. On the way back down, an old tanned, naked man was making his way to the top with a walking stick. Kit stopped to talk with him while I pretended that public nakedness is something I see every day back in Ohio. He later informed me that nude hiking among senior citizens is not uncommon there. Our days were spent rambling through wildflower meadows, ancient cold springs, and ruins of stone cottages that were being swallowed up by the forest. At night from his home’s high elevation, the stars looked like you could reach out and grab a few.
After a wonderful week, we recognized that we would never be a transatlantic couple but would remain good friends. During the years that followed, we wrote intermittently about politics, travel, nature, hens, and motorcycles. However, a few years ago, he began suffering alarming abdominal pains and lost several pounds. After he was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and began difficult chemo treatments, I wrote more frequently. His last message was full of joy that England had done so well in the World Cup this summer. Then came a note from a family member saying that he had passed away at age 66. It turns out my inheritance from him is huge – the notion of appreciating every day on this gorgeous planet as if it were my last.
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