Written by Samedi Valpic nr 6 – september 20 –
The Haut-Plateau is the story of many stories, because from the “Mont de Lens” and its dozen or so mayens before the bisses of 1450 to the 55,000 souls in the resort during the season, a lot of water has flowed from the Lienne and the Raspille into the Rhône.
In “Histoires d’Histoires”, Jean-Claude Savoy, a former member of the Valais parliament, the last President of Chermignon and a lover of the Haut-Plateau, came to tell us some of the stories that make up history.
The story is first and foremost one of geography, from the Lienne to the Raspille, from Plaine Morte to the Rhône. A territory sometimes rich in vineyards and woods, more hostile in mountains and plateaus that offer refuge only to alpine pastures during the short summer months.
This is the story of a resilient people, in the diversity of its groupings. Communes, Coordination Commissions, Associations of Communes, Bourgeoisies, all in a variety of consortages and dicasteries that knit together a social life that has not always had the same stitch.
Yet water is the starting point. It is water that has engendered the genius of this hard-working people, who have managed to harness it in their bisses. Without bisses, the region would be a desert with no permanent habitat. In the 15th century, for example, titanic works completed the Grand Bisse (de Lens) in 2 years, under the command not of a civil engineer, but of the Prior… One of the first bridges between the absence and abundance of water, since even today we take only 10% of the water (made drinkable) available thanks to the precipitation that accumulates seasonally in our glacier and reservoirs.
Water, “life in the mountains”, ended up creating “the city in the mountains”. Post-war boom in winter sports, flat roofs to harmonize an urbanism impatient to deconstruct the wood of misery, silos for weekend residences to save a limited buildable area.
This new life, this new town, shaking up the local “Weltanschauung”, not without resistance, insinuated itself into the urbanized civilization of leisure. Golf, skiing, ski lifts, the glory of 1987, but also financial decline and the divorce between the population and cable systems, when mountain adventure gave way to business.
Has local politics given up? A closer look tells us otherwise. The memory of illustrious local figures and their works are still very much alive. Local societies, festivals and traditions continue unabated. There’s talk of projects that have been refined, bitterly debated and carefully placed in a drawer whose key has been thrown away, but also of those that are preoccupying the moment and that will certainly soon be put on the varnished table of hard-won consensus.
In a conclusion constructed as a (master) class exercise in the form of a comical primer, the providence of a conquered audience retained the letter “i”, giving the master of the microphone the opportunity to extract this wisdom: “i” as in here. Here is not elsewhere, because we’re from here. Elsewhere isn’t here because it’s further away. When you’re here, you don’t go anywhere else, because that’s where you belong. But when you’re from somewhere else, you’re not from here…”.
Jean-Claude Savoy’s presentation and bibliography (at the end of the file) can be found in the Members’ Area, under Valpic Saturdays: https: //valpic.ch/espace-membres/les-samedis-valpic