My winter Sunday hikes in the frozen Shawangunk Mountains did the trick and prepared me, while still fat, to have strong enough legs to bound over the Montagne Noire, the Black Mountains of southern France, trailing my energetic and knowledgeable hostess and guide, Karen, as closely as the thin slip of trail would allow. One day she took me to the commune Lastours in the valley of the Orbiel. The village is a collection of stone houses near a twist in the river where the Romans once had an iron forge and made their iron for weapons, agriculture and hinges. A recent flood destroyed the Roman site. Yet above us, in the hills over our head, our true quest hovered in the mist and wind.

On the steep hills above the modern day village are the Four Castles of the Cathars. This historic site is complex in history and would require much more space than this humble column could possibly provide. Let me start with the oldest history first, the Cave and the Princess of Lastours. The cave is a large space about the size of the common room of the Walden firehouse. It has two entrances and tunnels which can get you all the way to Carcassonne, 7.5 miles away. The bones of the princess were found in the sepulture of the cave, a side cave. She was a young woman from the Bronze Age and wore a necklace of pearls and amber and gold which suggests she had a link to the Mycenae or the Egyptians. Not much else is known of her and little else from her age survives.

Fast forward a thousand years. The Romans mined copper and silver and gold and iron from these hills and used the forge near the river for refining and manufacturing their needed goods.

Jump ahead another 800 (+ or-) years and we are in the age of the Cathars. The Cathars built the main castle on these hills for protection, while the people themselves lived in adequate stone houses around the base of the castles. The Cathars were Christians who believed in two gods: a god of Goodness and a God of Evil. They were known during their own times as the Bon Hommes, or the Good Men.

Catharism held sway in much of the Languedoc region of France from Toulouse to Nimes. They were independent and enjoyed their peaceful autonomy until Pope Innocence III decided to stamp them out and sent an expeditionary force to crush the so called heretics in what became known as the Albigensian Crusade 1209 -1229. From a distant valley wall, a catapult was set up and the castle walls were bashed for days until the Cathars surrendered. The village was destroyed and they were forced to leave without any of their possessions.

The French Catholic forces now occupied the hilltop and built, to mark their triumph, the Four Castle Towers still so prevalent on the landscape today.

As I walked through their ruined Cathar homes, I could make out the forges and the stone work-benches and I could hear the sound of the clear brook which passed just below their front doors, and I could almost feel the tranquility of the life they must have lived for hundreds of years in this quiet, green corner of the world.

And it strikes me there must have been long periods of peace for mankind, periods when they made jewelry and traded, and grew their crops and held their babies in their arms, and moved out of the caves and built homes and tended fields. And then there comes the periods of war, and pestilence, and degradation and famine, usually caused by someone else who thinks they know better than you do. And it all vanishes forever right in front of your eyes.