Word: massif
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...missing after floods raged through villages and towns in the south of France. Five of the dead were from the village of Aramon, which was inundated when a dam gave way following torrential rain. The d é partement of the Gard, between the Mediterranean and the hills of the Massif Central, got the worst of the floods, with 19 dead and 3,000 people forced from their homes. Provence has suffered five such disasters since 1988. Jacques Thorette, a drainage expert, said: "Everywhere in France, we have paved rural roads; we have built car parks around supermarkets without worrying where...
...Bedouin of Oman scorned the towns of the coast, preferring the desert sands and open skies. But the towns offer the best introduction. Muscat and its port town Muttrah, wedged between the coast and the imposing Jebel Akhdar massif, evoke an old-world flavor. Portuguese-style whitewashed mansions?remnants of the colonial era?crowd the harbor front. Ancient forts crown the heights, securing dominance over the lucrative spice trade between Arabia, Africa and India. From here Oman controlled an empire that stretched from Zanzibar, now in modern-day Tanzania, to Baluchistan, now part of Pakistan...
...mission was simple: scout the region and find a single 120-acre plot where Mondavi could produce 240,000 bottles of top-quality wine each year. After two years of road trips, wine tasting and geological surveying, he settled on a patch of scrub-covered hillside on the Massif de l'Arboussas, above the village of Aniane, about 15 miles northwest of the regional center of Montpellier. There was just one problem: the land belonged to the village. "French people wouldn't even think about doing something on common land," Pearson says. "But we went ahead and asked...
...centuries the route to Damascus has posed a challenge to travelers. The Syrian capital is walled away from the West and from the Mediterranean by the double massif of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, rising to 10,000 ft. In other directions, the city is surrounded by the Badiya as-Sham, the great Syrian Desert, where, for seven months of the year, the relentless sun becomes a blinding enemy. But while the physical obstacles to Damascus remain, other barriers appear to be falling. Its economy in tatters, its army mired in Lebanon and its alignment with Iran a growing...
...very old. France is the scene of other tales, just as it has been the setting for much of Fisher's own adult life. The collection's finest piece, The Oldest Man, is about an American woman's visit to a stern, mountainous region called the Massif Central, where a centenarian and his septuagenarian son have their ancestral home. As always, the author's observations of local landscape, weather, architecture and gastronomical specialties (in this case, Roquefort) are as keen and winning as her insights into her characters. Most engaging is the 100-year...