Happiness and the chatâigne search

The first time we ever saw chatâigne trees--and knew what they were--was the day we were driving from Rennes-les-Bains to Bugarach. This was years ago. It was autumn, one of those crystal sky days when there's just enough of a nip in the air to require a heavy jacket and a wool scarf for tramping through the woods. Our goal that day was to see the Pech de Bugarach up close with the crown of snow that had been added the night before. What we did not anticipate was the bottleneck of cars on the narrow road that parallels the river under the steep and forested hills of the upper Sals. We had taken the road many times and rarely encountered another car. The serene and untouched beauty of the dense forests was what drew us there in the first place. On this particular October day, however, the Sals was alive with chataigne gatherers.

If you are English or American, you're probably asking, what is the chatâigne, anyway? When we asked people in the village where we lived at the time in the upper valley of the Aude what chataigne were, they explained that they were like a wild variety of the marron, which is what the English and Americans call chestnuts. I've come to learn that it's not quite that simple, but no matter. The important thing is, you can buy chataigne in grocery stores around here, but for the true autumn experience, you want to go out and pick your own up off the ground, which is just what all those people were doing on the road to Bugarach.

Now what has all of this to do with happiness? Well, it seems that scientists are finding that happiness is contagious, as are a host of other behaviors, such as obesity and smoking.

(more to come)