June 2023: I resume my walk at Landry in the Tarentaise valley, where I had stopped the previous year. I got off to a slow start, beginning my days early and gradually increasing the distance and pace. The end of the days in the heatwave are intense, but my body keeps up. And the Parc de la Vanoise is fabulous. I walk almost alone below the immense glaciers, meet lots of marmots and even spot some recently reintroduced Bearded Vultures.
On the fourth day, I could feel the machine starting to go. I pushed on further than planned and reached a refuge after a nine-hour walk. The hot shower and meal felt good. The next day the weather turned cloudy and it was a steep climb. I get overtaken by a guy who becomes my hare, so I speed up. For an hour I followed him up the rocks, nearly slipping several times. During a break in a huge wooden refuge that had just been built, I hear that a walker has just been taken away by helicopter, having broken his nose when he slipped. I set off again at a good pace, even though I’d lost the hare. I slip on a rock on the way down. The image of the walker comes back to me like a warning. If I don’t want to break my nose, I have to slow down. There’s no hurry, I’m ahead of schedule. At 2pm, I decide to stop for lunch, a wash and a nap. I’ll look for a place to sleep later.
The shepherd has been watching me for several hours from the top of his rock. When I pass his flock looking for a place to sleep, he calls out to me and asks where I’m going. I join him on his rock, where he turns out to be a shepherdess. She offers to let me pitch my tent next to her chalet. We start chatting about her job and her life bringing in the flock. The conversation continues in the chalet over a goat’s tomme and a beer. I’ve always been fascinated by the life of a shepherd. Shepherds have returned in recent years, at the same time as the wolves. The shepherdess is there to protect her eight hundred ewes from the wolves. At night, she surrounds them with an electrified fence. If she hears a wolf, she cranks up the music and lights firecrackers to scare it away. After that, it’s the dog’s job. It’s impossible to know whether the sheepdog will attack and who will win. Every night, she’s afraid of losing a sheep. What does she think about the return of the wolves? That’s just the way it is. To each his own. The wolf eats the animals, the shepherds protect the ewes, they give milk and maintain the landscape, the hikers go for walks. She feels like she belongs here, doing her bit.
Her blend of commitment and wisdom amazes me. Once I started walking again, a third learning curve gradually took shape. A system is a movement. There’s not always much you can do about it. I’ve changed elements of my system, I’ve learnt a key lesson through pain, but I’m still capable of losing sight of all that and making the same mistakes again. The walker with the broken nose was a wake-up call and a reminder of what I’ve learnt. But next time I’ll walk too much, I’ll get lost, and I’ll be in a bad way. I’ve realised that despite all the safeguards I’ve put in place, I’m still fundamentally powerless in the face of change. And that’s not such a bad thing. It won’t stop me from enjoying this ride. It’s a weight off my shoulders, a relief.
For Donnella Meadows, once all the levers have been activated to change a system, the most powerful thing is to let go and accept our limited power in the face of the complexity of systems. To let go of the ultimate paradigm, which consists of believing that we can change a system by knowing it. You can’t control a system or understand it. But you can dance with it.
On my hiking trail, rather than trying to understand the system, all I had to do was to walk.
Thanks to Elodie for her support and Bertrand for the bits of GR together.