‘The Age of Wood’: Forests in Wartime France

Abstract

In Jean Giono’s short story The Man Who Planted Trees the narrator wanders across a ‘landscape of unparalleled desolation’ in ‘the ancient region where the Alps extend into Provence’. In this dry, sparsely populated region he meets a serene shepherd, Elzéard Bouffer, who has selflessly taken it upon himself to plant thousands of trees in the arid soil to save this region from dying from a ‘lack of trees’. After five years in the army during the First World War and desiring ‘to breathe some fresh air’, our narrator returns to find that whilst he was fighting in the trenches the good shepherd was sowing ‘beautiful birch plantations’. When war breaks out again in 1939, their remote location saves the shepherd’s trees from being turned into fuel and the war passes Bouffer by: ‘he didn’t even know about it … going peacefully on with his task, ignoring the 1939 war just as he’d ignored the war of 1914’. Over the years, Bouffer transformed the ‘wilderness’ into a ‘healthy and prosperous’ region where water, wildlife and villages burst into life, nourished by the trees and where a ‘soft and scented breeze’ replaced the ‘rough and arid gusts’ that once swept across the mountains.1 KeywordsForest ManagementState ForesterPrivate ForestWood CharcoalCharcoal BurnerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.