Every two weeks, this summer, the author Rafaële Germain offers us a change of pace. It brings us to meet people and places out of time, on the fringes of the mad race.
When the neighbor opposite blocked the hole through which the marmot was passing, it first carried out the usual checks: it walked around the porch once, twice, three times, then it dug where his tunnel entrance was to see what we all already knew, that when it comes to cement, the neighbor is tough to beat. A little annoyed, she went into the yard, where she nibbled for a while, probably meditating on the malevolence of men, then she waddled under the porch of Mike’s little house.
“She wasn’t happy,” confirmed Mike, with the smile of a man who knows his groundhog’s moods.
Mike has always lived there, in a rickety old cabin, at the green confluence of the suburbs and a wetland, among animals and birds. He was born here, he grew up here and it is here that his days flow, between the television and the window on the second floor through which he smokes watching the world.
We have long wondered, as busy people convinced of the great relevance of our occupations, what Mike could do with his time. He drinks his beer on the porch, belly, the little bump of his pacemaker clearly visible under the skin, just above his heart. He never gets far, a trip to the grocery store to stock up on cigarettes and fresh oranges, a chat with the neighbor. In summer, he settles facing the river, no book, no smartphone, no work, no company. Sometimes he calls: “Your hens are in the street! And the tanner is still with us. »
Mike knows who the tanning hens and the well-behaved hens are, he knows the philosophical marmots and the furtive foxes, the dreamy cats and the minks full of projects. It was he, of course, who provided the report of the facts following the blocking of the burrow. Sitting on his porch, light years away from the hustle and bustle of the world and the zeitgeist, Mike casts a benevolent blue gaze on the little lives that surround him. This is what he does with his time.
He takes no particular pride in it.
The idea of feeding an Instagram account with the arrival of the first ducklings of the year (so cute!) or posting on TikTok a video of the couple of beavers who are always fighting over the willow shoots (#bonkerbeavers) would not cross his mind, even if I am convinced that with his Longueuil haircut to make the more invested in hipsters, he could reap the like cheerfully enough.
He therefore never flaunts his discoveries and his learnings, he offers them at the turn of a small session of small-talkbetween two banalities, it hasn’t rained for a long time, the gas will have to stop rising, you wouldn’t believe the number of trips a heron can make to build a nest.
As he almost never goes out, his field of expertise is extremely limited, a few thousand square meters which include his land, the bank which extends just in front, the stretch of river which flows between his home and the island of opposite, and what his gaze can embrace of the sky. He does not follow the northern pike he has seen spawning in the shallow water and has never laid eyes on the beautiful barrage of willow-eating beavers, but he has seen the little duckling being adopted by the barnacle colony, its tiny yellow form standing out among the clumsy goslings. He knows where the raccoon sleeps and the paths the skunk takes, always the same every night. It was he who told me how Lupine the cat taunts the fox, always advancing ten paces behind him, stopping when he stops and hiding when he turns around, to set off again at the same time as the fox. He was particularly thrilled by this story – in the never-ending drama the landscape affords him, the fox-tracking tomcat was a frankly welcome twist.
Far, far be it from me to idealize Mike’s life. I know nothing of stored dreams and small joys, and who am I to presume the silence of winter nights, when even the coyote gives up leaving its den? But in a world where we retain so little of everything that passes so quickly, his intimate knowledge of a narrow piece of territory comforts and inspires me. Shouldn’t we all give nature the time it deserves and look at it in a way that is worthy of its beauty? It’s a way of going out to meet the country which is no longer very popular, and in this it is also, it seems to me, a very small act of resistance.
The marmot, of course, agrees with me.