The first interview in the first issue of Heron Dance was of Frédéric Back, an artist and animation pioneer who spent much of his life serving the message of a book, The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono. Frédéric became a friend, and, inspired by his message, and that of the book, I created my own book of art and writing based on Giono’s work.

In The Man Who Planted Trees two men — one younger, one older — encounter each other in the mountains. The older man is a shepherd and tree planter; the younger man is in search of adventure or perhaps on a personal quest. Over several decades, as a result of occasional contact between the two, the Shepherd shapes the hiker’s perception of what is important in life.

The Shepherd of the book plants hundreds of thousands of trees in a barren, mountainous area close to the border between Italy and France. Despite adversity, the Shepherd keeps planting. Wars rage around him; he focuses on what he sees as important. He serves the positive, the beauty and mystery of life, and ignores the problems, the negative.

Einstein’s sense of the miraculous, of the mystery of life, is central to the Shepherd’s happiness. He builds his life around it.

Excerpts from my interviews of Frédéric Back here.