We’d pedaled in the shadow of Mont Ventoux, riding east across Provence just as summer’s heat began to cook the asphalt. Outside of the town of Sisteron, we passed fields of lavender, not yet fully in bloom. Equal parts purple and green, the fields promised a future hinted at in photos.
We turned into a forest and began the zigging and zagging down the mountainside, plunging toward Sisteron. Had we been going up, I’d have described the grade as firm, but not brutal. Going down meant I could sprint out of turns without ever reaching terminal velocity—a pitch that rewarded good technique and minimal braking.
At a certain point I began to detect a scent unlike anything I’d ever encountered. It was both feral and refined, earthy and extravagant, calming and intoxicating. To say I smelled it is to suggest it filled but one sense. To the degree that I could feel it on my skin, detect it with my eyes and ears, I did. Never had something filled my sinuses and made me feel so beguiled.
What was happening?
And then, at better than 40 mph, I carved around a sweeping right-hand turn and nearly caught a flat-bed truck stacked with bales of freshly cut lavender. At the speed I was going, I could have swung into the oncoming lane, passed the truck and been on my way, plummeting to the Durance River.
That’s not what I did. I held out a backward-facing palm to slow the two riders behind me, then tapped my brakes and slotted in behind the truck, trailing it so closely I could have tossed a cat on top of the bales. I stopped pedaling, sat up and saturated my sinuses with the perfume. Chanel wishes it could create something so seductive—yes, seductive. There aren’t many things that could compel me to drop my speed to below 30 mph on a mountain descent.
I pulled into the truck’s draft, so that the air filtering through the bales flowed over me.
We followed the truck to the main highway through town, where it turned right and our route took us left. I felt a moment of misgiving, a flicker of disappointment after the last sip of wine.