“Where the forest is, Chateaubriand is believed to have said, there is the homeland: forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.“

This quotation attributed to Chateaubriand,
though no one seems to be able to find it in his writings or correspondence, has haunted me ever since I discovered it while browsing a web page. What did this august French writer mean to share with us, if he is indeed the author?
While the first part seems to affirm the intimate connection between humans and the land, the second part is a scathing condemnation of the nefarious impact of humans on the world that surrounds us. Chateaubriand an ecologist ahead of his time—who would have thought? One could even see it as a terse commentary on the rise and fall of civilizations, but we’ll leave that discussion for another time… Indeed this quote would have been a great topic for the French baccalaureate philosophy exam this year, but they did even better by selecting a quote from Mes Forêts, a collection of poems by our very own Hélène Dorion, Quebec’s poetess of trees and the natural world.

L’homme qui plante des arbres rares du Québec
La Presse, 2024-07-13
I’m sharing all this with you because in a few days we will be meeting with Charles Lussier,
a well-known Quebec geographer/botanist, to discuss how we might improve the state of our woodlands on the farm. We’re looking forward to our discussions with him.

In the baskets this week:
cantaloupe, corn, eggplant or pepper, summer squash, fennel, tomato, leafy greens, beans or potatoes, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.