The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities , one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years . If this performance is devoid of all egoism , if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity , if it is absolutely certain that there is no thought of recompense and that , in addition , it has left its visible mark upon the earth , then there can be no mistake . About forty years ago I was taking a long trip on foot over mountain heights quite unknown to tourists , in that ancient region where the Alps thrust down into Provence . All this , at the time I embarked upon my long walk through these deserted regions , was barren and colorless land . Nothing grew there but wild lavender . I was crossing the area at its widest point , and after three days ' walking , found myself in the midst of unparalleled desolation . I camped near the vestiges of an abandoned village . I had run out of water the day before , and had to find some . These clustered houses , although in ruins , like an old wasps ' nest , suggested that there must once have been a spring or well here . There was indeed a spring , but it was dry . The five or six houses , roofless , gnawed by wind and rain , the tiny chapel with its crumbling steeple , stood about like the houses and chapels in living villages , but all life had vanished . It was a fine June day , brilliant with sunlight , but over this unsheltered land , high in the sky , the wind blew with unendurable ferocity . It growled over carcasses of the houses like a lion disturbed at its meal . I had to move my camp . After five hours ' walking I had still not found water and there was nothing to give me any hope of finding any . All about me was the same dryness , the same coarse grasses . I thought I glimpsed in the distance a small black silhouette , upright , and took it for the trunk of a solitary tree . In any case I started toward it . It was a shepherd . Thirty sheep were lying about him on the baking earth . He gave me a drink from his water - gourd and , a little later , took me to his cottage in a fold of the plain . He drew his water - excellent water - from a very deep natural well above which he had constructed a primitive winch . The man spoke little . This is the way of those who live alone , but one felt that he has sure of himself , and confident in his assurance . That was unexpected in this barren country . He lived , not in a cabin , but in a real house built of stone that bore plain evidence of how his own efforts had reclaimed the ruin he had found there on his arrival . His roof was strong and sound . The wind on its tiles made the sound of the sea upon its shore . The place was in order , the dishes washed , the floor swept , his rifle oiled ; his soup was boiling over the fire . I noticed then that he was cleanly shaved , that all his buttons were firmly sewed on , that his clothing had been mended with the meticulous care that makes the mending invisible . He shared his soup with me and afterwards , when I offered my tobacco pouch , he told me that he did not smoke . His dog , as silent as himself , was friendly without being servile . It was understood from the first that I should spend the night there ; the nearest village was still more than a day and a half away . And besides I was perfectly familiar with the nature of the rare villages in that region . There were four or five of them scattered well apart from each other on these mountain slopes , among white oak thickets , at the extreme end of the wagon roads . They were inhabited by charcoal burners , and the living was bad . Families , crowded together in a climate that is excessively harsh both in winter and in summer , found no escape from the unceasing conflict of personalities . Irrational ambition reached inordinate proportions in the continual desire for escape . The men took their wag [ 안내 ] 태그 제한 으로 등록 되 지 않 습니다 - xx [ 안내 ] 태그 제한 으로 등록 되 지 않 습니다 - xxonloads of charcoal to the town , then returned . The soundest characters broke under the perpetual grind . The women nursed their grievances . There was rivalry in everything , over the price of charcoal as over a pew in the church , over warring vitues as over warring vices as well as over the ceaseless combat between virtue and vice . And over all there was the wind , also ceaseless , to rasp upon the nerves . There were epidemics of suicide and frequent cases of insanity , usually homicidal . The shepherd went to fetch a small sack and poured out a heap of acorns on the table . He began to inspect them , one by one , with great concentration , separating the good from the bad . I smoked my pipe . I did offer to help him . He told me that it was his job . And in fact , seeing the care he devoted to the task , I did not insist . That was the whole of our conversation . When he had set aside a large enough pile of good acorns he counted them out by tens , meanwhile eliminating the small ones or those which were slightly cracked , for now he examined them more closely . When he had thus selected one hundred perfect acorns he stopped and we went to bed . There was peace in being with this man . The next day I asked if I might rest here for a day . He found it quite natural - or , to be more exact , he gave me the impression that nothing could startle him . The rest was not absolutely necessary , but I was interested and wished to know more about him . He opened the pen and led his flock to pasture . Before leaving , he plunged his sack of carefully selected and counted acorns into a pail of water . I noticed that he carried for a stick an iron rod as thick as my thumb and about a yard and a half long . Resting myself by walking , I followed a path parallel to his . His pasture was in a valley . He left the dog in charge of the little flock and climbed toward where I stood . I was afraid that he was about the rebuke me for my indiscretion , but it was not that at all : this was the way he was going , and he invited me to go along if I had nothing better to do . He climbed to the top of the ridge , about a hundred yards away . There he began thrusting his iron rod into the earth , making a hole in which he planted an acorn ; then he refilled the hole . He was planting oak trees . I asked him if the land belonged to him . He answered no . Did he know whose it was ? He did not . He supposed it was community property , or perhaps belonged to people who cared nothing about it . He was not interested in finding out whose it was . He planted his hundred acorns with the greatest care . After the midday meal the resumed his planting . I suppose I must have been fairly insistent in my questioning , for he answered me . For three years he had been planting trees in this wilderness . He had planted one hundred thousand . Of the hundred thousand , twenty thousand had expected to lose half , to rodents or to the unpredictable designs of Providence . There remained ten thousand oak trees to grow where nothing had grown before . That was when I began to wonder about the age of this man . He was obviously over fifty . Fifty - five , he told me . His name was Elezeard Bouffier . He had once had a farm in the lowlands . There he had his life . He had lost his only son , then this wife . He had withdrawn into this solitude where his pleasure was to live leisurely with his lambs and his dog . It was his opinion that this land was dying for want of trees . He added that , having no very pressing business of his own , he had resolved to remedy this state of affairs . Since I was at that time , in spite of my youth , leading a solitary life , I understood how to deal gently with solitary spirits . But my very youth forced me to consider the future in relation to myself and to a certain quest for happiness . I told him that in thirty years his ten thousand oaks would be magnificent . He answered quite simply that if God granted him life , in thirty years he would have planted so many more that these ten thousand would be like a drop of water in the ocean . Besides , he was now studying the reproduction of beech trees and had a nursery of seedlings grown from beechnuts near his cottage . The seedlings , which he had protected from his sheep with a wire fence , were very beautiful . He was also considering birches for the valleys where , he told me , there was a certain amount of moisture a few yards below the surface of the soil . The next day , we parted . The following year came the War of 1914 , in which I was involved for the next five years . An infantry man hardly had time for reflecting upon trees . To tell the truth , the thing itself had made no impression upon me ; I had considered as a hobby , a stamp collection , and forgotten it . The war was over , I found myself possessed of a tiny demobilization bonus and a huge desire to breathe fresh air for a while . It was with no other objective that I again took the road to the barren lands . The countryside had not changed . However , beyond the deserted village I glimpsed in the distance a sort of grayish mist that covered the mountaintops like a carpet . Since the day before , I had begun to think again of the shepherd tree - planter . " Ten thousand oaks , " I reflected , " really take up quite a bit of space . " I had seen too many men die during those five years not to imagine easily that Elzeard Bouffier was dead , especially since , at twenty , one regards men of fifty as old men with nothing left to do but die . He was not dead . As a matter of fact , he was extremely spry . He had changed jobs . Now he had only four sheep but , instead , a hundred beehives . He had got rid of the sheep because they threatened his young trees . For , he told me ( and I saw for myself ) , the war had disturbed him not at all . He had imperturbably continued to plant . The oaks of 1910 were then ten years old and taller than either of us . It was an impressive spectacle . I was literally speechless and , as he did not talk , we spent , the whole day walking in silence through his forest . In three sections , it measured eleven kilometers in length and three kilometers at its greatest width . When you remembered that all this had sprung from the hands and the soul of this one man , without technical resources , you understand that men could be as effectual as God in other realms than that of destruction . He had pursued his plan , and beech trees as high as my shoulder , spreading out as far as the eye could reach , confirmed it . He showed me handsome clumps of birch planted five years before - that is , in 1915 , when I had been fighting at Verdun . He had set them out in all the valleys where he had guessed - and rightly - that there was moisture almost at the surface of the ground . They were as delicate as young girls , and very well established . Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction . He did not worry about it ; he was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity ; but as we went back toward the village I saw water flowing in brooks that had been dry since the memory of man . This was the most impressive result of chain reaction that I had seen . These dry streams had once , long ago , run with water . Some of the dreary villages I mentioned before had been built on the sites of ancient Roman settlements , traces of which still remained ; and archaeologists , exploring there , had found fishhooks where , in the twentieth century , cisterns were needed to assure a small supply of water . The wind , too , scattered seeds . As the water reappeared , so there reappeared willows , rushes meadows , gardens , flowers , and a certain purpose in being alive . But the transformation took place so gradually that it became part of the pattern without causing any astonishment . Hunters , climbing into the wilderness in pursuit of hares or wild boar , had of course noticed the sudden growth of little trees , but had attributed it to some natural caprice of the earth . That is why no one meddled with Elzeard Bouffier ' s work . If he had been detected he would have had opposition . He was indetectable . Who in the villages or in the administration could have dreamed of such perseverance in a magnificient generosity ? To have anything like a precise 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 speech . Or perhaps it was that he saw no need for it . In 1993 he received a visit from a forest ranger who notified him of an order against lighting fires out of doors for fear of endangering the growth of this natural forest . It was the first time , that man told him naively , that he had ever heard of a forest growing out of its own accord . At that time Bouffier was about to plant beeches at a spot some twelve kilometers from his cottage . In order to avoid travelling back and forth - for he was then seventy - five - he planned to build a stone cabin right at the plantation . The next year he did so . In 1935 a whole delegation came from the Government to examine the " natural forest ". There was a high official from the Forest Service , a deputy , technicians . There was a great deal of ineffectual talk . It was decided that some thing must be done and , fortunately , nothing was done except the only helpful thing : the whole forest was placed under the protection of the State , and charcoal burning prohibited . For it was impossible not to be captivated by the beauty of those young trees in fullness of health , and they cast their spell over the deputy himself . A friend of mine was among the forestry officers of the delegation . To him I explained the mystery . One day the following week we went together to see Elezeard Bouffier . We found him hard at work , some ten kilometers from the spot where the inspection had taken place . This forester was not my friend for nothing . He was aware of values . He knew how to keep silent . I delivered the eggs I had brought as a present . We shared our lunch among the three of us and spent several hours in wordless contemplation of the countryside . In the direction from which we had come the slopes were covered with trees twenty to twenty - five feet tall . I remembered how the land had looked in 1913 : a desert . .. Peaceful , regular toil , the vigorous mountain air , frugality and , above all , serenity of spirit had endowed this old man with awe - inspiring health . He was one of God ' s athletes . I wondered how many more acres he was going to cover with trees . Before leaving , my friend simply made a brief suggestion about certain species of trees that the soil here seemed particularly suited for . He did not force the point . " For the very good reason , " he told me later , " that Bouffier knows more about it than I do . " At the end of an hour ' s walking - having turned it over his mind - he added , " He knows a lot more about it than anybody . He ' s discovered a wonderful way to be happy ! " It was thanks to this officer that not only the forest but also the happiness of the man was protected . He delegated three rangers to the task , and so terrorized them that they remained proof against all the bottles of wine the charcoal burners could offer . The only serious danger to the work occurred during the war of 1939 . As cars were being run on gazogenes ( wood - burning generators ) , there was never enough wood . Cutting was started among the oaks of 1910 , but the area was so far from any rail roads that the enterprise turned out to be financially unsound . It was abandoned . The shepherd had seen nothing of it . He was thirty kilometers away , peacefully continuing his work , ignoring the war of ' 39 as he had ignored that of ' 14 . I saw Elzeard Bouffier for the last time in June of 1945 . He was then eighty - seven . I had started back along the route through the wastelands ; by now , in spite of the disorder in which the war had left the country , there was a bus running between the Durance Valley and the mountain . I attributed the fact that I no longer recognized the scenes of my earlier journeys to this relatively speedy transportation . It seemed to me , too , that the route took me through new territory . It took the name of a village to convince me that I was actually in that region that had been all ruins and desolation . The bus put me down at Vergons . In 1913 this hamlet of ten or twelve houses had three inhabitants . They had been savage creatures , hating one another , living by trapping game , little removed , both physically and morally , from the conditions of prehistoric man . All about them nettles were feeding upon the remains of abandoned houses . Their condition had been beyond hope . For them , nothing but to await death - a situation which rarely predisposes to virtue . Everything was changed . Even the air . Instead of the harsh dry winds that used to attack me , a gentle breeze was blowing , laden with scents . A sound like water came from the mountains : it was the wind in the forest . Most amazing of all , I heard the actual sound of water falling into a pool . I saw that a fountain had been built , that it flowed freely and - what touched me most - that some one had planted a linden beside it , a linden that must have been four years old , already in full leaf , the incontestable symbol of resurrection . Besides , Vergons bore evidence of labor at the sort of undertaking for which hope is required . Hope , then , had returned . Ruins had been cleared away , dilapidated walls torn down and five houses restored . Now there were twenty - eight inhabitants , four of them young married couples . The new houses , freshly plastered , were surrounded by gardens where vegetables and flowers grew in orderly confusion , cabbages and roses , leeks and snapdragons , celery and anemones . It was now a village where one would like to live . From that point on I went on foot . The war just finished had not yet allowed the full blooming of life , but Lazarus was out of the tomb . On the lower slopes of the mountain I saw little fields of barely and of rye ; deep in the narrow valleys the meadows were turning green . It has taken only the eight years since then for the whole countryside to glow with health and prosperity . On the site of ruins I had seen in 1913 now stand neat farms , cleanly plastered , testifying to a happy and comfortable life . The old streams , fed by the rains and snows that the forest conserves , are flowing again . Their waters have been channeled . On each farm , in groves of maples , fountain , pools overflow on to carpets of fresh mint . Little by little the villages have been rebuilt . People from the plains , where land is costly , have settled here , bringing youth , motion , the spirit of adventure . Along the roads you meet hearty men and women , boys and girls who understand laughter and have recovered a taste for picnics . Counting the former population , unrecognizable now that they live in comfort , more than ten thousand people owe their happiness to Elezeard Bouffier . When I reflect that one man , armed only with his own physical and moral resources , was able to cause this land of Canaan to spring from the wasteland , I am convinced that in spite of everything , humanity is admirable . But when I compute the unfailing greatness of spirit and the tenacity of benevolence that it must have taken to achieve this result , I am taken with an immense respect for that old and unlearned peasant who was able to complete a work worthy of God . Elezeard Bouffier died peacefully in 1947 at the hospice in Banon . Dvorak - Symphony No . 9 in E minor , Op . 95 From the New World