I have been back at the ranch for about three weeks. Not without some regret did I leave France and all my friends there. While I was there I re-connected with old friends and connected with many new ones. I re-visited some of my old hangouts and discovered new ones, adding lots of new experiences to my recent history. Never having participated in a roundup in France before, I leaped at the opportunity to do so–and survived, and surprisingly enough, none of the French cowboys laughed at me. Never having hiked up a river before, I waded into the water for a six or seven kilometer trek up a small river into some mountains. That is a sport I had never seen before. Wading, yes, but hiking up the rapids, through the potholes with a lunch in a backpack and literally dozens of other people (dogs and children included) doing the same thing, is an amazing experience.
I was superbly welcomed and hosted in Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Nimes, and Carcassonne, by people I knew or who knew of me from reading this diary or from having read one or more of Dan’s books and having learned something about his and my friendship. So I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone in France: Yves and Natalie, Marc and Marion; Alain and aurelia, Dominic and Genevieve, Marie Claire and her husband, Celine Z., Laura D., Celine T., Mandy, Charles, Roxanne and the rest of the staff at Au Diable Vauvert, Phillipe le Boutellier, and Catherine and Didier. These people made my visit easy, and more enjoyable than I had a right to expect. For that and many other things, I thank them a thousand times over. For those of you who don’t already know it, I consider myself to be an adopted son of France and have thought that way for over twenty years.
I have been very fortunate in a kind of roundabout way through Dan’s books having been translated into French. Readers there, very much interested in the same things as we (restoration of the prairie by bringing back the buffalo) write to the website. The e-mails in French are forwarded to me, and I respond; thereby meeting new people, but more importantly realizing that many people outside our immediate purview are interested in what we are trying to accomplish. In France I believe this to be especially true because France has recognized itself to be in an ecological crisis and is responding very seriously to overcome the deffects of that crisis. The people of France are taking huge steps to correct the adverse effects of agricultural chemical pollution, of toxic emissions from factory and nuclear produced generation of energy. They are recycling at an amazing rate and have raised their collective conscience to include similar efforts in other parts of the globe, which includes us here in the Great Plains.
We continue to muddle through, trying to accomplish something as odd and rewarding as the recreational wading up a small mountain river in the deep south of France.