Mound Mound
Amy Bobeda
Small red hands , outlines of women dot the walls . This is what home should feel like ; the tour is nearly over . A man from Albuquerque asks , “ did they really sleep down here ?”
“ No ,” the docent responds with a small grin , “ there are no records , of course , but it ’ s believed early man took to the caves for spiritual experience .” We look to the stalactites and mites , millennia of water moving bits of sand , and see it hanging in the cool air — church , temple , mosque , the sacred space to transcend . “ A temple is a landscape of the soul . When you walk into a cathedral , you move into a world of spiritual images . It is the mother womb of your spiritual life -- mother church .” Joseph Campbell recites in The Power of Myth .
∿∿∿ The world is vast beneath the surface . Pech Merle , one of the only caves along France ’ s Dordogne that remains open to the public , garners its name from the local Occitan language , Pech meaning hill , Merle , perhaps also meaning hill or mound . Before entering the mound-mound , we notice a seemingly unimportant oak tree — thin , well lodged in the rocky soil . Other slender oaks dot the plot of land . But it ’ s too hot out to notice . We stop at the museum to pee and survey the map of red points along the river — a trail of caves now kept from our modern bodies .
We move through the gi shop into a surprisingly dark room with two glass walls . Shoppers watch us sit through the window . Warm and stuffy next to three Canadian families , a few from the states , and a large man from Australia . We make up the bevy of English speakers who will descend into the cave a er the current French-speaking party emerges . The docent turns on a