Fireworks // The Morning Walk [Ep.143] from Guethary, France

Last year, I was stunned to read that there is credible debate that the Spaniard, Christopher Columbus, was not the first European to “discover” America.
The evidence? By the time he arrived in North America in 1492, some indigenous tribes there were already using words that belonged to another European culture renowned for its seafaring.
The little port town of Guethary, in Southwest France, hugs a rugged coastline where the Pyrenees mountains rise from the sea to pointed summits against the summer sky.
Going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the fiercely independent local Basque population has lived off the sea. They were extraordinary sailors, renowned across Europe for their whaling and fishing prowess, matched only by their reverence for their land.
Every year, up and down the Basque coastline (which straddles what is now French and Spanish “territory”) fishing villages celebrate a “Fete du Port” - a celebration of the Port. It’s a tribute to the importance of the sea and a shared heritage of the ocean.
On the evening of Guethary’s “Fete du Port” I was sitting in my in-law’s small house, feeling listless.
My wife was encouraging me to come down to the Port to watch the fireworks and I was busy coming up with excuses. I mean, hey! I’d already seen plenty of fireworks before, right?
Finally, I gave in, and we all headed out into the darkening night, joining crowds of people heading in the direction of the ocean.
I was grumbling and cranky. All these people! Sheesh! I’d rather just be comfortable at home.
We found ourselves a small clearing amongst the throng, just above the port, and waited for the last of the light to bleed from the sky. I really didn’t feel like being there.
Then suddenly…
…BOOM!
Fzzzz… BOOM!
Right above us, at what felt like almost touching distance, the fireworks display exploded into the sky. My jaw hit the ground and I felt my heart almost stop in my chest.
We were so… close. I’d NEVER experienced fireworks from such proximity.
Boom, boom… BOOM.
Colours danced and detonated. Cackled and cracked. Scorched and shimmered.
My heart skipped away up into the sky with each trailing little line of light, only to burst into joyous colours.
As I sat mesmerised, something that should have been obvious struck me.
I could have missed this, WOULD have missed this, had my wife not encouraged me to come out.
Yes, I’d seen fireworks before. But so what? Seeing fireworks are one heck of an experience!
One of the things that happens as we get older is that we’ve “seen things before”. The older we get, the more we do, the easier it becomes to say “Nah, I won’t bother doing that wonderful, fun, enchanting thing. I’ve already done it before.”
Sorry, come again? You’d prefer to skip out on magic and joy, and sit at home, because you’ve done it before?
It’s an easy, but upside-down, trap to fall into.
We might never know definitively if the Basques were the first Europeans to have reached North America because they didn't have a written language until after the 1500s.
But maybe that’s the beauty of the Basque’s Port celebration: it's pride in how life was LIVED, in many ways unchanged, for hundreds of years.
As the last of the fireworks faded against the sky, I thanked the Basques for the important lesson… and my new resolution: to always seize "firework" moments of magic and joy in life, even if I've “done" them before.
#guethary #france #vlog #travel