This story is dedicated to the many who have fought for democracy. It is included in my book Dance Life: Movin' & Groovin' Around the Globe.

France 1972

I moved to France on the day I turned 18, my shadow folded in my rucksack. Though the Nazis had been vanquished 27 years earlier, I felt their ghosts along the trails as I traversed the moonlit silver beech forests of the Midi-Pyrénées, and wandered through remote stone villages darkened at night. Residents didn’t turn lights on—still terrified of drawing attention from the bombers they imagined flying overhead, still startled at the crunch of leather boots heard marching into their homes, tearing them apart, hunting for human quarry. Stars of David, gypsy clans, effeminate men were all prey to the evil of that war.

What had led me onto this blue-green slate trail winding upward through silent villages, gnarled orchards, and abandoned homesteads set beside crystalline streams?

I was following a map drawn on a sheet of lined binder paper torn from a school notebook. Two weeks before, in Paris, I had noticed a gaggle of students in tie-dye and long hair grouped around the entrance to the Olympia Theater. They had to be American!  I stopped and asked what was going on. It turned out the Grateful Dead were playing that night and they were waiting for scalper tickets. One guy chatted me up. He was from Colorado and a student at the Sorbonne, like me. We sat on the curb and talked about the music scene in San Francisco. “Do you like to dance? What are you doing for spring break?” he asked.

I had no plans.

 “A group of us are meeting at an abandoned farmhouse in the Pyrenees to dance, hike, and hang. It’s free. The farm belongs to one of my friends at school.”

So now, two weeks later, with his hand-drawn map, a sleeping bag, and backpack, I had taken the train to Perpignan and onward to a smaller town into the heart of the Pyrenees. The hike up the mountain to the farmhouse was long and arduous, and the trail passed through many of those bleak stone villages. 

Along the way, I had plenty of time to think about a book I had read a few months ago. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning had awakened me to the cruel reality of oppression and bigotry in the world. The book chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. During his time in the concentration camp Frankl, a therapist, developed a psychotherapeutic method to help people survive devastating situations. It involves identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersive imagining that outcome, regardless of surrounding conditions. This curtain of history was never revealed in my high school history classes. That one could heal from the horrors of a living hell was also a revelation.

The spirit of resistance and indignant fury followed me out of the pages of Frankl’s book; as a teenager I was on fire, and the call to danger and rescue appealed.

To fightfrom the shadows—to be a spy for the resistance, derailing human cargo trains snaking their sinful way to the German borders, was my dream. Alas, I was born several decades too late to join the forces fighting the dark cloud of Nazism in Europe.

But my fiery determination was a start. Over time, the passions remained the same, but mellowed into more poetic pursuits. New goals were targeted in my crosshairs. To be bold and beautiful. To be brave and righteous. To defend the weak and vulnerable. To speak French perfectly—my American accent hiding behind French mannerisms so perfectly, I might as well be a spy. To walk silently, for had I not been a tracker in a past life in the Pyrenees, slipping from shadow to shadow in the dark of night on a mission, or leading children and their families to coastal ports to escape? My imagination was on fire—youthful passion trumping reality, fanning the flames of righteous indignation and fantasy.

I learned to breathe silently, falling in love with crumbling, ancient farmhouses and feasting on moldy chèvre and plonk tasting of iron, sometimes shared with other freedom fighters, or savored alone. I leaned against the smooth bark of whispering trees, my shadow imprinted on their trunks.

The X on the map was accurate. I spent a week with the students doing exactly what my host had detailed: cavorting and dancing to music that blared from a cassette player in the barn loft and eating a lot of granola. After a while, I’d heard too many out-of-tune Grateful Dead songs, so I wandered off by myself during the day.

Called to the loneliness and mystery of the mountains, I climbed higher, resting against haystacks, meandering through forests, and sipping icy creek water, as I imagined the resistance fighters had done decades ago. The secrecy of the mountains was still alive, holding the imprint of those who had walked these same trails to safety—many of whom had given up their lives. Afterward, I had the luxury of returning to the barn and my party-animals friends, dancing to the flower child tunes—not peering from behind tree trunks, wondering who was going to shoot at us or what neighbor might turn us in. It was a very different reality in a very different era. And it was a freedom given us by those who had fought in the wars.