A survival story, no matter where it happens in the world, will always be heartwarming — especially when it’s a senior citizen getting a second lease on life. But much like everything else, in France, survival stories play out a little differently. With a slight je ne sais quoi, if you will.
According to People, a 77-year-old man in the mountainous region of Cévennes in South Central France took out his bike to go on a slight stroll to his local supermarket with a tote bag in hand. He had one goal in mind: get a bottle of wine. Who among us, after all, wouldn’t want to spend the twilight of their lives riding a bike in the afternoon to get a bottle of wine? It sounds like a delight.
But trouble in paradise soon followed, and the old man fell off the path. As we’ve seen in similar stories, sometimes getting off track can be a life-and-death situation. For this old man, it meant falling 130 feet down. The fall was through a lonely rocky slope that led to a ravine in Saint-Julien-des-Points. Somewhat surprisingly — especially considering his advanced age — he ended up surviving the fall.
However, that was just the first step. Whenever people are pushed into corners where they have to keep their minds relaxed and focused on solutions in a seeming purgatory of wilderness and never-ending hope, what one always needs to do is work with whatever they have. For our French survivor, all he had was a bottle of wine.
For three days, he was in the ravine crying out for help and not a single soul heard him. Throughout that nightmarish ordeal, he just kept rationing his wine. Wine is all that sustained him until someone finally heard him on Oct. 28 — and he was finally saved.
The survivor was then airlifted to a nearby hospital where, after initial observations, he was only found to have signs of mild hypothermia and minor injuries. The doctor who worked on him explained to international media that his survival was nothing short of a miracle, and credited the man for his resilience. There’s a warm-hearted joke somewhere in there in biblical measures — after all, he survived three days on nothing but wine, literally living off what scripture calls the blood of Christ.
The story has since gotten a lot of international press — and although everyone is happy for the man and his family, they’ve chosen to stay away from the press and his name has not even been made public yet. Regardless, with everything going on in the world, sometimes a little good news is all we need to remember that being alive is, in fact, a joyful experience.
But leave it to the French to have a survival story that has an element of style in it. No matter what they do — from protesting in the streets of Paris to robbing the Louvre — when France is mentioned, just expect the story to also be the most fashionable version of it. May that 77-year-old wine lover continue living a wonderful life!
