Hunt
Everyone has their own Proust’s madeleine, something that takes them back to childhood.
For me, it looks like a hilly landscape that, little by little, is being nibbled away by gluttonous quarries.
This area covers three square kilometers. It’s not much, but enough to hold countless memories of my youth.
First, there are the fields, carpeted in shades of gray and green, stretching as far as the eye can see, and which, in the right season, see the corn stalks rise toward the azure sky.
You have to get lost in this labyrinth, to hear the ears of corn crack beneath damp soles, to catch your breath in the morning mist. These grounds have a particular fragrance that, on cold winter days, reminds me of the time when, as a child, I used to accompany my uncle hunting partridges.
Memories in black and white, like a seemingly frozen theater, from which only the colorful remnants of rifle and shotgun bullets still glimmer.
Here and there, trees, sometimes lined up in rows, sometimes standing alone, hang over the open fields and trace baroque shapes in the fog.
Then comes the view of the Pyrenees: unique and grandiose. At home, the horizon is closed. It’s not like in the United States, where roads stretch on forever. No, I grew up with these mountains before me, protective barriers and jealous guardians of the rain clouds.
The sight, the smell, the touch of the earth, this fertile land soaked to the bone by the jolts of the Garonne. Everything grows here. It is a granary where human crops delight game, rodents, and birds alike.
To walk these kilometers is to immerse oneself in a concert of buzzards’ cries mingled with the song of the bright hoopoe and the rhythmic gallop of startled hares.
As a regular visitor to the city, I try as often as possible to offer my ears the pleasure of this sweet melody.
Swirling by day, it slows to a softer tempo at night, alternating with a heavy, almost tangible silence.
I particularly cherish those hours when, guided by the light of the moon, I wander along these paths.
Hunt is a faithful portrait of this archipelago, a playground for my childhood memories and a landscape of choice for stories still in the making.
Technical details
Languages: French / English
40 pages, 21 x 29.7 cm
30 images, black and white and color
Design: Studio Dirk, Brussels
Price: 10 euros
Available in bookstores and at www.jeanlucfeixa.com
