“It was a forest of absent men, where the branches hung like lifeless arms, and the paths were nothing but memories. One moved forward struggling against space itself, against the density of the trees, against that living substance which refused all passage.”
Jean Giono, Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ma joie demeure)
That alone is truly powerful which can be, but can also not be...
Power is not the opposite of powerlessness... it contains within itself its own possibility of withdrawal. Perhaps that is why it always remains greater than the act that brings it into being.
Where we see, during their second journey toward the forest, Don Carrot and Warmblood gazing in childlike wonder at the world that receives them.
Power is not the opposite of powerlessness... it contains within itself its own possibility of withdrawal. Perhaps that is why it always remains greater than the act that brings it into being.
Where we see, during their second journey toward the forest, Don Carrot and Warmblood gazing in childlike wonder at the world that receives them.
From Don Carrot's Journal
Just before twilight, and before we had yet recognized anything from our previous journey, the forest rose before us like an ancient architecture—indecipherable and sovereign. Though we felt no anxiety whatsoever, we nonetheless had the impression of hanging outside time itself. Nothing, it seemed, had been left to chance within that intricate entanglement which, under other circumstances, might have plunged us into uneasy reverie. Such was not the case here, in this world where, without our knowing it, our own shadows had disappeared. Every layer of vegetation, every liana hanging like a suspended thread, every cushion of moss covering the stones possessed its own logic, its own place, its own role within the luxuriant harmony of the living.
Patient observation gradually revealed its structure, and neither Warmblood nor I deprived ourselves of that pleasure. Ancient trees, straight as cathedral columns, stretched their trunks toward dizzying heights, their crowns joining together to form an almost impenetrable vault. Light, rare and precious, scarcely found its way through, filtered by countless overlapping canopies into a dust of green-gold suspended within the humid air. At our feet, the roots traced labyrinths of their own: some as thick as human arms, others as delicate as nervous filaments, revealing the forest to be a single immense subterranean organism.
The sounds, too, obeyed their own order: the distant cry of a bird, the fall of a drop of water into the hollow of a rock, the rustling of something invisible moving through the undergrowth. Yet at the heart of that world there was silence. A living silence, as though it were listening, watching, holding its breath.
And as for the bond between Warmblood and myself, that silence exercised upon us the most beneficial influence. For more than half the journey—which was a very long one—we exchanged scarcely a few words, while a delicate and radiant moon, piercing the canopy above, quietly took possession of the night.
Just before twilight, and before we had yet recognized anything from our previous journey, the forest rose before us like an ancient architecture—indecipherable and sovereign. Though we felt no anxiety whatsoever, we nonetheless had the impression of hanging outside time itself. Nothing, it seemed, had been left to chance within that intricate entanglement which, under other circumstances, might have plunged us into uneasy reverie. Such was not the case here, in this world where, without our knowing it, our own shadows had disappeared. Every layer of vegetation, every liana hanging like a suspended thread, every cushion of moss covering the stones possessed its own logic, its own place, its own role within the luxuriant harmony of the living.
Patient observation gradually revealed its structure, and neither Warmblood nor I deprived ourselves of that pleasure. Ancient trees, straight as cathedral columns, stretched their trunks toward dizzying heights, their crowns joining together to form an almost impenetrable vault. Light, rare and precious, scarcely found its way through, filtered by countless overlapping canopies into a dust of green-gold suspended within the humid air. At our feet, the roots traced labyrinths of their own: some as thick as human arms, others as delicate as nervous filaments, revealing the forest to be a single immense subterranean organism.
The sounds, too, obeyed their own order: the distant cry of a bird, the fall of a drop of water into the hollow of a rock, the rustling of something invisible moving through the undergrowth. Yet at the heart of that world there was silence. A living silence, as though it were listening, watching, holding its breath.
And as for the bond between Warmblood and myself, that silence exercised upon us the most beneficial influence. For more than half the journey—which was a very long one—we exchanged scarcely a few words, while a delicate and radiant moon, piercing the canopy above, quietly took possession of the night.
