“Come on, Marthe,” I said. “Wear something bright.” It was our next-to-last day at the 2013 Bordeaux Writer’s Workshop. “Let’s take some pictures.”

Soon down to the road we flew.

There’s something Freudian about this one. A stony castle, graceful to be sure, but large and hulking in the background. An open gate. A long road still unfolding. A slender figure in her purple drapery lost in contemplation.

Not a rough road, but unpaved. And solitary, threading through fields of merlot.