Written by (on the high Plateau)
After all, why live there rather than anywhere else? Putting down your bags for a moment or a long time is not a trivial matter. It’s always a choice: the choice to come or the choice to stay, and it’s the choice of a place, a space, a geography.
But are we really sure? Do we choose beautiful, sunny mountains that invite nonchalance, or friends, families, those with whom we like to be surrounded?
The owner’s journey deserves attention because it has a History, a Reason and an Emotion.
Reason often starts with hypotheses, meetings and calculations. A day’s visit becomes a stay, whether in a hotel, with friends or family, and is repeated until the price of the visit has to give way to the choice of buying a home. People come here, time and again, for the new freedom to enjoy the seasons, walks and evenings with friends, old and new. Saturdays and Sundays follow each other like eighth notes, vacations take up whole measures and one day there’s a break: we stay.
The emotion of discovery gave way to the emotion of being there. The place of a day carries the bond of a lifetime. The geographical designation, a snapshot shaped only by the weather and a few jobs, becomes a showcase for experiences and sharing. The point on the map becomes the map of shared time.
This is the principle of history. The owner writes it with his neighbors, his village, his town, with or in spite of the mountain, beautiful, rugged, always admirable, showing us the line of its peaks, a line that indicates the long time.
This is how roots grow. Old stocks of multi-century families, mature wood of those who are learning, or young, lively and fragile shoots. These three branches are soon destined for the same tree thriving in the same soil. Each responds to the other so that the leaves are green and the flowers generous.
This tree grows with the seasons. Proud in the summer sun, strong in the winter chill, it sings and rustles in the soft evening breeze. But when the storm comes, it wonders, doubts and mourns the branches it has lost. He counts himself among the forest and looks at himself. Nothing goes on, everything stops, breath is hard to come by.
It’s by looking at ourselves in this forest, it’s through the sap that heals the broken tree, that time is rebuilt. The bonds of exchange and sharing are found less in the place than in the heart. Growing together, not fighting alone.
Sailors fear storms and avoid them. But when it invites itself and then leaves us, those who remain draw closer together to be stronger tomorrow. Certainly not to brave new storms, but to find strengthened energies in the power of connection and essential empathy.
Isn’t he the owner?
Jean
29.1.2026