📍 Aubrac plateau · Lozère, France — June–July 2025
Vast, never-ending fields, guarded by tall volcanoes from all directions. The air is full of animal scent and the grave silence is periodically cut with the sounds of cattle bells.
No, I am not in the Wild West, I am on a plateau of Massif Central in France. Parc Naturel RĂ©gional de l’Aubrac. The cowboy in me is fearless, but something strange is looming from those tall, lonely gentians and aggressive eyes of Aubrac bulls. The sun is scorching, and still something makes me shiver.
Only later I will realise, I’m in a fever dream.
The end of the world
Aubrac is Le bout du monde. Nasbinals is in the heart of it – 30 minutes from the nearest grocery store. The infinite, rolling plains and isolation plant seeds of doubt into you – not to return to the city, but to rethink your life and values.
There is something special about losing your cellular connection. It’s like letting go of something inside of you. The cricket songs and cow moos suddenly don’t sound so sad.
The time freezes and the sweet taste of peace makes you sleepy. You will eventually fall asleep.
You will forget that plain Bonjour you exchanged every morning with your favourite people didn’t feel like it can perish.
But it can.
What is real?
My mind often wanders to the beautiful landscape, to the places, smells, winds or sunsets that are special to the vast plains of Aubrac. It wants to return.
Of course, you can. You already did. But you know it isn’t possible.
Because fever dreams are not about the scenery. They’re about the moments you collected, the people you were with, the past versions of yourself, and the absurdity of being unreachable. And sometimes about the vision that you had to discard.
The logic of fever dreams empowers the tiniest cracks of your mind into massive holes. Nostalgia then floods them.
A fever dream, I wrote in my journal. Everything from it feels so distant now but so beautiful.
Waking up
I didn’t write much about the place. It’s mesmerisingly beautiful and I loved every single moment spent there. But Aubrac left a more important mark.
Some places you visit. Others you carry home without realising, folded into the lining of something, and only later — months later, reaching for something else entirely — do you find them there.
Aubrac and Nasbinals are the second kind.
If only I knew how and whether I want to wake up from this fever dream and risk losing it forever.