Aubrac Plateau

The plateau is treeless, the sky is enormous, and the granite crosses lean at angles suggesting centuries of wind from the same direction. The Aubrac is a basalt grassland above a thousand metres in France's southern Massif Central — empty, windswept and arresting in a way that has more to do with absence than presence. The wildflowers in June contradict the austerity, and the cows do not care.

The Aubrac is a mid-mountain plateau at the junction of the Aveyron, the Cantal and the Lozère, an old volcano worn to infinite expanses of grass where the only vertical things are the drystone walls, the piles of basalt and granite, a stand of fir and the burons — the squat basalt huts where the herdsmen summered and made cheese, a few of them now serving lunch. The Compostela road from Le Puy crosses it, and the pilgrims come over in spring with the crosses to guide them through the mist. The Aubrac cattle, pale with black-ringed eyes, climb to the summer pastures in late May in a transhumance the villages celebrate, and their milk becomes the tome that goes into aligot — potato purée beaten with fresh tome and cream until it stretches in ribbons, the plateau's one true dish. In May and June the narcissus and then the orchids turn the grassland white and gold, and the emptiness is itself the destination.