THE MAN WHO PLANTED THE TREES Tratto liberamente dal racconto di Jean Giono

About forty years ago there was a man,called Jean-Paul,who went walking throught the ancient

regions where the Alpes go down, in Provence The few villages had been abandoned for many years and everything was desolation.The only

vegetation that exsisted was the wild lavender

Jean-Paul was very thirsty.It was three days he was walking and he had no water.There was a fountain in the

village,but it was dry.

He arrived in a abandoned village where there were only abandoned houses

Fortunately he met an old man,a shepherd with his

thirty sheep.He gave him some water and later invited

him home for dinner

He gave him some water and later on he invited him

home for dinner

The shepherd took out a bag and poured out a pile of acorns on the table.He began to examine them,one after another,with great attention,separating the good ones from the bad.

He chose 100 perfect acorns and went to bed.

The following morning he

took an iron stick and went

out on the land and started

planting his acorns

The man had been

planting a lot of trees

for a lot of years

Jean-Paul asked the shepherd a few questions so he got some personal information such as:

the old man wasn’t the owner of that land,

his name was Elzeard Bouffier,

he had lived on a farm and first he lost his only child and later his wife.

He decided to live in solitude,to live in peace with his dog

and his sheep and he devoted his time planting trees in

that place

Jean-Paul in 1914 left that place and joined to the Army because

of the outbrek of the 1st world war.He returned to those places

after the war.

He returned to those places after the war and he noticed

that the landscape had changed

The sheperd was not died he had continued to plant trees

for many years by replacing the sheep with many hives.

He didn’t care about the war.

Walking down the hill he saw steams of water, flowers,the

new houses had gardens around them where people

grew flowers and vegetables

But his trasformation took so slowly that people were not surprised.

Government authorities thought that the environment had changed

spontaneously.

That’s why no one had touched the work of this man

Hope returned and the area grew healthy and prosperous.

People lived in peace and had parties.

Over the following years the young trees continued to grow and grow until the area became a wonderful green

forest

There was also a line bus

ELZEARD BOUFFIER DIED IN PEACE IN 1947 at the Hospice in Banon

A cura della prof.ssa Maria Addolorata Merico