Sur les chemins noirs

A magnificent praise of escape and slowness, Sylvain Tesson’s narrative is a literary and pedestrian journey that he decided to undertake one morning: “after an accident (a fall from a roof), I had to undergo rehabilitation. That is the word doctors use to describe the recovery of one’s strength. Walking from the Mercantour to the Cotentin seemed to me an acceptable idea. Besides, I found it somewhat absurd to have spent so much time in Siberia and Tibet without knowing the Indre-et-Loire (…). I wish neither to deliver a message nor to point anything out. I simply want to show that French territory still possesses a network of forgotten paths and silent tracks where one can encounter animals, ghosts, the trace of a sumptuous past and sublime views. For that, a map at 1:25,000 and a pair of boots will suffice,” a book that reveals, at human scale, territories forgotten and abandoned by a blind modernity.

A praise of escape, truly? Not entirely, if one listens to its author: “to flee is to take paths one has chosen for oneself. And knowing oneself responsible for the direction one takes is proof that the direction is right. It is an old idea, an old inclination, this desire to stand in the wings. Diogenes in his barrel, and Symeon on his pillar, were pursuing the same thing. Sometimes it is vital to stand at the edge of the world. And then fleeing becomes urgent. Consider that nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. Walking in nature gives us the opportunity to practice one of the most beautiful and most difficult exercises of existence: that of being self-sufficient (…). Knowing exactly what I need and what is necessary for my vitality corrects my inner darkness. Besides, how could one not be somber in a world that will soon be populated by 10 billion human beings, whose secret hope, whatever they may say, is to live as comfortably as a Californian?”