“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
In 1953 the French writer Jean Giono published a thin volume, titled, “The Man Who Planted Trees.”
The story’s narrator, hiking alone in the south of France, comes upon a desolate, treeless valley covered in wild lavender. The year is 1910.
The hiker is befriended by a shepherd, Elzeard Bouffier, who takes him to water and allows the hiker to stay with him in his modest cabin. Curious, the hiker stays on long enough to observe a one-man reforestation project his host has undertaken.
Each day the shepherd takes a sack of carefully selected acorns he collected from a distant forest, and one-by-one, he punches a hole in the ground with an iron rod and drops an acorn in the hole.
The narrator is called to fight in World War I. At the end of the war and in desperate need of another long walk through an unpeopled land, he returns to the valley 10 years after his initial visit. He finds it shrouded in a cloud of oak, beech and birch saplings. Once dry creek beds now gurgle with water. His old friend is still planting trees. The sheep have been replaced by honeybees.
Over four decades the shepherd transforms the dead valley into a Garden of Eden teeming with life.
For years readers believed the story was true and Giono was the narrator. The writer enjoyed nurturing the misconception until 1957 when he wrote to a city official in the village of Digne-les-Bains (this from Wikipedia and translated from the French):
Dear Sir,
Sorry to disappoint you, but Elzeard Bouffier is a fictional person. The goal was to make trees likeable, or more specifically, make planting trees likeable (this has always been one of my most fondest ideas). And if I judge based on the results, it seems to have been attained through this imaginary person. The text … has been translated in Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, English, German, Russian, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Yiddish and Polish.
I freely give away my rights, for all to publish. An American has come to me recently, to ask my permission to make 100,000 copies, which he would distribute freely in America (which of course, I granted). …
While I’m not trying to reforest any desolate valleys, in recent years I’ve developed an interest in planting trees. I suppose it’s the ultimate expression of optimism, being in your 60s and trying to grow oak trees from acorns. I find inspiration from a variety of sources in addition to Jean Giono’s book, among them, Nativ Nurseries, one of the many creations of Toxey Haas, founder of Mossy Oak, Inc.
Located off Old West Point Road between 45A and Starkville, the nursery this time of year is filled with a brilliant array of oak seedlings grown from acorns collected from particularly robust trees in the area.
One such specimen — what I take to be a chestnut oak — can be found just southwest of the walking track at Baptist Memorial Golden Triangle. The size of its acorns varies year to year, but two years ago they were almost as big a golf balls.
My first afternoon there this fall, I was accosted by a passing hospital administrator with a concerned look on his face. He asked if I needed help. When I said I was looking for acorns, he said, “Oh” and, not knowing what else to say, walked on.
The following Friday I took my grandson — one can get away with all manner of dubious activity when a child is involved — who is more obsessive about collecting acorns than I am. I’d say we gathered about 300 oak trees, I mean acorns.
The next morning he and his sister helped me plant 25 of them in pots. We’ve also “potted” acorns from an English oak in New York state; we’ve transplanted volunteer Shumard seedlings taken from a median at The W (someone would have weeded them out anyway) and I’m anxiously awaiting the emergence of seedlings from four cue-ball sized acorns (no exaggeration) that came from some sort of hybrid oak near Swoope’s Bend on Old West Point Road.
I’m confident we’ll be successful with some of these. I have a knee-high oak from an acorn I picked up in Central Park a couple years ago, same for some of the hospital seedlings from years back.
How will this year’s crop do? Check back with me in 10 or 15 years and I’ll let you know. In the meantime I hope to be watching these little miracles become trees.
If you were among the 85 or so souls in the Omnova Theater Friday evening at the Rosenzweig Arts Center Friday evening to hear The New Agrarians, I don’t need to tell you what a special time it was. CAC programmer Beverly Norris continues to quietly work her magic. Next event comes the evening of Wassail Fest (8 o’clock). If the past is any guide, it too will be memorable.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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