The next year the war of 14
came, in which I was engaged for five years. An infantryman could hardly think
about trees. To tell the truth, the whole business hadn't made a very deep
impression on me; I took it to be a hobby, like a stamp collection, and forgot
about it.
With the war behind me, I
found myself with a small demobilization bonus and a great desire to breathe a
little pure air. Without any preconceived notion beyond that, I struck out
again along the trail through that deserted country.
The land had not changed.
Nonetheless, beyond that dead village I perceived in the distance a sort of
gray fog that covered the hills like a carpet. Ever since the day before I had
been thinking about the shepherd who planted trees. “Ten thousand oaks, I had
said to myself, must really take up a lot of space.”
I had seen too many people
die during those five years not to be able to imagine easily the death of
Elzéard Bouffier, especially since when a man is twenty he thinks of a man of
fifty as an old codger for whom nothing remains but to die. He was not dead. In
fact, he was very spry. He had changed his job. He only had four sheep now, but
to make up for this he had about a hundred beehives. He had gotten rid of the
sheep because they threatened his crop of trees. He told me (as indeed I could
see for myself) that the war had not disturbed him at all. He had continued
imperturbably with his planting.
The oaks of 1910 were now
ten years old and were taller than me and than him. The spectacle was
impressive. I was literally speechless and, as he didn't speak himself, we
passed the whole day in silence, walking through his forest. It was in three
sections, eleven kilometers long overall and, at its widest point, three
kilometers wide. When I considered that this had all sprung from the hands and
from the soul of this one man, without technical aids, it struck me that men
could be as effective as God in domains other than destruction.
He had followed his idea,
and the beeches that reached up to my shoulders and extending as far as the eye
could see bore witness to it. The oaks were now good and thick, and had passed
the age where they were at the mercy of rodents. As for the designs of
Providence, to10 destroy the work that had been created would henceforth require
a cyclone. He showed me admirable stands of birches that dated from five years
ago, that is to say from 1915, when I had been fighting at Verdun. He had
planted them in the valley bottoms where he had suspected, correctly, that
there was water close to the surface. They were as tender as young girls, and
very determined.
This creation had the air,
moreover, of working by a chain reaction. He had not troubled about it, he went
on obstinately with his simple task. But, in going back down to the village, I
saw water running in streams that, within living memory, had always been dry.
It was the most striking revival that he had shown me. These streams had borne
water before, in ancient days. Certain of the sad villages that I spoke of at
the beginning of my account had been built on the sites of ancient Gallo-Roman
villages, of which there still remained traces; archeologists digging there had
found fishhooks in places where in more recent times cisterns were required in
order to have a little water.
The wind had also been at
work, dispersing certain seeds. As the water reappeared, so too did willows,
osiers, meadows, gardens, flowers, and a certain reason to live.
But the transformation had
taken place so slowly that it had been taken for granted, without provoking
surprise. The hunters who climbed the hills in search of hares or wild boars
had noticed the spreading of the little trees, but they set it down to the
natural spitefulness of the earth. That is why no one had touched the work of
this man. If they had suspected him, they would have tried to thwart him. But
he never came under suspicion. Who among the villagers or the administrators
would ever have suspected that anyone could show such obstinacy in carrying out
this magnificent act of generosity?
Beginning in 1920 I never
let more than a year go by without paying a visit to Elzéard Bouffier. I
never saw him waver or doubt, though God alone can tell when God's own hand is
in a thing! I have said nothing of his disappointments, but you can easily imagine
that, for such an accomplishment, it was necessary to conquer adversity;
that, to assure the victory of such a passion, it was necessary to fight
against despair. One year he had planted ten thousand maples. They all died.
The next year, he gave up on maples and went back to beeches, which did even
better than the oaks.
To get a true idea of this
exceptional character, one must not forget that he worked in total solitude; so
total that, toward the end of his life, he lost the habit of talking. Or maybe
he just didn't see the need for it.
In 1933 he received the
visit of an astonished forest ranger. This functionary ordered him to cease
building fires outdoors, for fear of endangering this natural forest. It was
the first time, this naive man told him, that a forest had been observed to grow
up entirely on its own. At the time of this incident, he was thinking of
planting beeches at a spot twelve kilometers from his house. To avoid the
coming and going - because at the time he was seventy-five years old - he
planned to build a cabin of stone out where he was doing his planting. This he
did the next year.
In 1935, a veritable
administrative delegation went to examine this “natural forest”. There was an
important personage from Waters and Forests, a deputy, and some technicians.
Many useless words were spoken. It was decided to do something, but luckily
nothing was done, except for one truly useful thing: placing the forest under
the protection of the State and forbidding anyone from coming there to make
charcoal. For it was impossible not to be taken with the beauty of these young
trees in full health. And the forest exercised its seductive powers even on the
deputy himself.
I had a friend among the
chief foresters who were with the delegation. I explained the mystery to him.
One day the next week, we went off together to look for Elzéard Bouffier. We
found him hard at work, twenty kilometers away from the place where the
inspection had taken place.
This chief forester was not
my friend for nothing. He understood the value of things. He knew how to remain
silent. I offered up some eggs I had brought with me as a gift. We split our
snack three ways, and then passed several hours in mute contemplation of the
landscape.
The hillside whence we had
come was covered with trees six or seven meters high. I remembered the look of
the place in 1913: a desert... The peaceful and steady labor, the vibrant
highland air, his frugality, and above all, the serenity of his soul had given
the old man a kind of solemn good health. He was an athlete of God. I asked myself
how many hectares he had yet to cover with trees.
Before leaving, my friend
made a simple suggestion concerning certain species of trees to which the
terrain seemed to be particularly well suited. He was not insistent, for the
very good reason, he told me afterwards, that this fellow knows a lot more
about this sort of thing than I do. After another hour of walking, this thought
having travelled along with him, he added, "He knows a lot more about this
sort of thing than anybody - and he has found a jolly good way of being
happy!"
It was thanks to the
efforts of this chief forester that the forest was protected, and with it, the
happiness of this man. He designated three forest rangers for their protection,
and terrorized them to such an extent that they remained indifferent to any
jugs of wine that the woodcutters might offer as bribes.
The forest did not run any
grave risks except during the war of 1939. Then automobiles were being run on
wood alcohol, and there was never enough wood. They began to cut some of the
stands of the oaks of 1910, but the trees stood so far from any useful road
that the enterprise turned out to be bad from a financial point of view, and
was soon abandoned. The shepherd never knew anything about it. He was thirty
kilometers away, peacefully continuing his task, as untroubled by the war of 39
as he had been of the war of 14.
I saw Elzéard Bouffier for
the last time in June of 1945. He was then eighty-seven years old. I had once
more set off along my trail through the wilderness, only to find that now, in
spite of the shambles in which the war had left the whole country, there was a
motor coach running between the valley of the Durance and the mountain. I set
down to this relatively rapid means of transportation the fact that I no longer
recognized the landmarks I knew from my earlier visits. It also seemed that the
route was taking me through entirely new places. I had to ask the name of a
village to be sure that I was indeed passing through that same region, once so
ruined and desolate. The coach set me down at Vergons. In 1913, this hamlet of
ten or twelve houses had had three inhabitants. They were savages, hating each
other, and earning their living by trapping, physically and morally, they
resembled prehistoric men. The nettles devoured the abandoned houses that
surrounded them. Their lives were without hope, it was only a matter of waiting
for death to come, a situation that hardly predisposes one to virtue.
All that had changed, even
to the air itself. In place of the dry, brutal gusts that had greeted me long
ago, a gentle breeze whispered to me, bearing sweet odors. A sound like that of
running water came from the heights above, it was the sound of the wind in the
trees. And most astonishing of all, I heard the sound of real water running
into a pool. I saw that they had built a fountain, that it was full of water,
and what touched me most, that next to it they had planted a lime-tree that
must be at least four years old, already grown thick, an incontestable symbol
of resurrection.
Furthermore, Vergons showed
the signs of labors for which hope is a requirement. Hope must therefore have
returned. They had cleared out the ruins, knocked down the broken walls, and
rebuilt five houses. The hamlet now counted twenty-eight inhabitants, including
four young families. The new houses, freshly plastered, were surrounded by
gardens that bore, mixed in with each other but still carefully laid out,
vegetables and flowers, cabbages and rosebushes, leeks and gueules-de-loup,
celery and anemones. It was now a place where anyone would be glad to live.
From there I continued on
foot. The war from which we had just barely emerged had not permitted life to
vanish completely, and now Lazarus was out of his tomb. On the lower flanks of
the mountain, I saw small fields of barley and rye. In the bottoms of the
narrow valleys, meadowlands were just turning green.
It has taken only the eight
years that now separate us from that time for the whole country around there to
blossom with splendor and ease. On the site of the ruins I had seen in 1913
there are now well-kept farms, the sign of a happy and comfortable life. The
old springs, fed by rain and snow, now that are now retained by the forests,
have once again begun to flow. The brooks have been channeled. Beside each
farm, amid groves of maples, the pools of fountains are bordered by carpets of
fresh mint. Little by little, the villages have been rebuilt. Yuppies have come
from the plains, where land is expensive, bringing with them youth, movement,
and a spirit of adventure. Walking along the roads you will meet men and women
in full health, and boys and girls who know how to laugh, and who have regained
the taste for the traditional rustic festivals. Counting both the previous
inhabitants of the area, now unrecognizable from living in plenty, and
the new arrivals, more than ten thousand persons owe their happiness to Elzéard
Bouffier.
When I consider that a single man, relying only on his own simple physical and moral resources, was able to transform a desert into this land of Canaan, I am convinced that despite everything, the human condition is truly admirable. But when I take into account the constancy, the greatness of soul, and the selfless dedication that was needed to bring about this transformation, I am filled with an immense respect for this old, uncultured peasant who knew how to bring about a work worthy of God.
Elzéard Bouffier died peacefully in 1947 at the hospice in Banon.
Final.
Also known as "The Man who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness", the book was first printed in 1954 and translated into a multitude of languages, distributed freely, and therefore was a success. Giono wrote that it did not bring him a cent, yet it is one of his works of which he was most proud. Many readers have believed that Elzéard Bouffier was a genuine historical figure and that the narrator of the story was a young Jean Giono himself, and so that the tale is part autobiographical. Certainly, Giono lived during this time and he enjoyed allowing people to believe that the story was real, and considered it as a tribute to his skill. His daughter, Aline Giono, described it as "a family story" for a long time. However, Giono himself explained in a 1957 letter to an official of the city of Digne. “Sorry to disappoint you, but Elzéard Bouffier is a fictional person. The goal was to make trees likeable, or more specifically, make planting trees likeable
Phần trước đó: The Man Who Planted Tree - Part I
Sincerely thank to Organic and Sustainable Gardening for the information in the book, Unsplash for providing this photograph and specially Jean Giono for writing of the book by heart. Thank you very much!
