Meeting with grace | EUROtoday

Cis a second of profound magnificence, a parenthesis suspended within the circulate of existence the place the guts is touched by one thing higher, nearly divine, that reveals Poetic memoirs of explorers (Les Belles Lettres, 2024).

For Alain Tixier, producer and director, this second of grace got here when he had simply found a Mayan metropolis misplaced within the coronary heart of a jungle in a rustic ravaged by violence. One morning, whereas he goes out for a jog, his listening to is captivated by unusual songs coming from a baroque and painted church. Intrigued, he pushes the door and finds himself witnessing an surprising scene: Guatemalan ladies, wearing clothes with multicolored ruffles and shawls positioned on their shoulders, are gathered on the ft of a priest, standing on the steps of the altar.

“They sing a cappella in a language unknown to me. Their voices of striking purity penetrate and captivate me. Shivers run through my entire body. Is it the freshness of the place or the intensity of the emotion that moves me to the core? » These hymns nailed him to his bench for nearly an hour, forever engraved in his memory, like a sacred imprint that neither time nor forgetting can to erase.

Moments snatched from time

Summoning a poetic memory, this is the delicate exercise undertaken by twenty-five French explorers. From the travel writer Édouard Cortès, who lived perched in an oak tree in Périgord Noir for one spring, to wildlife photographer Vincent Munierpassing by Marion Poitevin, soldier and instructor, who evokes her ascent of an ocean of granite having turned her life upside down, each of them reveals their encounter with the timeless, from the depths of the oceans to the immensity of space , passing through the dark caves and the most dizzying peaks on Earth.

In this collection of stories, sailors, divers, geographers and mountaineers share intimate moments, buried in the memory of lives shaped by adventure. They detach themselves from their exploits, from these grandiose conquests which populate their careers, to offer an intangible heritage of rare depth: moments snatched from time which touched their hearts.

Seized by a vertigo that is both intimate and cosmic

Olivier Archambeau, an eminent geographer, was participating in a documentary on the mystery of the sources of the Nile when he was struck by what he describes as “an astonishing moment made of savannahs and shooting stars”. That morning, unable to get again to sleep, he leaves his tent barefoot, an uncommon gesture for him, and leaves together with his eyes turned in direction of the sky. The starry immensity overwhelms him, and he’s seized by a dizziness that’s each intimate and cosmic.

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At his ft, he notices a path smoothed by a whole bunch of 1000’s of steps. “This path seems to want to transmit to me a part of the history of humanity, that of the first men setting out to hunt large animals, and of those, today, who cultivate this same land. It evokes the characteristic sound of elephant trunks tearing the foliage from the trees, they too having trodden this narrow track. In this moment, I have the strange feeling of sharing a fragment of common space-time with all these beings, under the benevolent eye of the Universe. »

“Beauty is everywhere, I hadn’t seen it”

Throughout the pages, we’re gripped by a combination of worry and surprise. Far from technical prowess or private triumphs, it’s these bursts of life, elegant encounters with nature and the unknown, which reveal a deeper fact. Through these confidences, it’s the poetry of the second that’s revealed, the very essence of the internal journey.

The textual content signed by Mélusine Mallender, entitled Enoughis especially poignant. The adventurer is on the finish of her rope, as a result of deplorable climate situations, which forestall her from kayaking on the canals of Patagonia. “I could rust because the humidity is so omnipresent,” she confides. “I feel washed out by so much water. Everything seems difficult, even urinating. » As the earth finally appears on the horizon, an unexpected appearance revives his enthusiasm and disrupts his perception of the journey. “Patagonia is beautiful and secret. She mocks our challenges and our agendas. Nothing is controlled there. Beauty is everywhere, I hadn’t seen it, focused on my suffering and frustrations. »

A powerful reminder that nature, indomitable and grandiose, bends neither to our desires nor to our demands, but offers us its raw beauty when we agree to contemplate it without resistance. A beautiful, moving and inspiring work.

“Poetic memoirs of explorers”assortment edited by Élodie Broussard, illustration by Amandine Compte, 19 euros. The copyright of this e book is fully donated to the Society of French Explorers for an exploration grant. This initiative is along with the Sagax scholarships, created to offer budding administrators an opportunity and assist in the manufacturing of documentaries, even very brief ones, which goal to advance data.