I want to end my anthology on a hopeful note.
This allegorical tale is about a young man who encounters Elzéard Bouffier, a shepherd, while walking in a denuded valley in the foothills of the Alps in 1913. Our narrator stops to chat with the shepherd, who takes him back to his hut. After a simple meal, Bouffier takes him out and shows him what he is up to, which is planting acorns. Over the course of three years, the shepherd has planted a hundred thousand trees, of which about ten thousand have grown.
“Because I was young I naturally thought of the future in terms of myself, and assumed everyone sought the same happiness. So I remarked how magnificent his ten thousand oak trees would be in thirty years’ time. He answered quite simply that, if God spared him, he’d have planted so many trees in those thirty years, the ten thousand would be just a drop in the ocean.”
The young man returns at the end of the First World War to find the deserted valley is now covered with native trees. He continues to go back each year, and each time there are more and more. The addition of so many trees has changed the environment completely; streams that were once dry flow again, and the deserted valley is attracting families.
A government delegation, in complete ignorance of the shepherd’s work, declares the area a “natural forest” and protects it. One year, our narrator takes a friend, who says of the shepherd: “He’s the wisest man in the world! He’s discovered a perfect recipe for happiness.” When the shepherd dies in his late 80s, he leaves behind an invigorated land.
The tale became a touchstone for the environmental movement in France and beyond. Jean Giono never took any royalties; he allowed the story to be distributed for free. My copy contains an afterward by Giono’s daughter Aline, who mentions other titles the story has had over the years, one of which is ‘The Man who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness’. I prefer that title.
Bouffier’s active citizenship is quiet and plodding; it binds him to the land in the best possible way. The story serves as a reminder that amid all the loud, shouty voices, and all the bad we find in the world, there is also good.
First published in French as ‘L’Homme qui plantait des arbres’ in 1953. First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, 1996
A Personal Anthology 