09 Dec Ripe Figs

“Do you remember the fig tree we came across at the start of the trip? It was full of ripe figs—we ate until we couldn’t eat anymore.”
I search my memory. I remember nearly all the places we set up our tipi tent during that trip. Or that one night we couldn’t. We arrived too late and ended up staying in a ruin on a bed of straw, safe and dry despite the circumstances. But the fig tree? That escapes me. What I do recall is a full cherry tree we gratefully came across at another time.
“Have you ever found yourself in dangerous situations?” my neighbor asks.

Once again, I scan my memory. I remember wild bulls passing by in the mist at a mountain pass. Or a policeman with a pistol inspecting us in an abandoned house where we had sought shelter. The rain had drenched us to the bone, so we built a fire in the fireplace to dry our clothes.

Thousands of stars
But the story I choose to tell is different.
We were in the dry part of the Ardèche, where people are few and water is even scarcer. One water source marked on our map turned out to be bone-dry, and the next was on the other side of a mountain we had yet to climb. By the time we reached the plateau at the summit, it was too late to descend—the path was barely visible.

We were thirsty after a long day of walking in the bright sun with heavy backpacks. Every water bag we carried was empty. Yet Hugues remained calm. “Wait here,” he said, disappearing into the bushes. Half an hour later, he returned with a cloth full of berries. He shared the loot equally among us, and we savored them.
That night, we slept under the open sky. There was no need for a tent. Thousands of stars glittered above us, and I stared at them until I drifted into sleep.

Picking and gathering
The next day, it wasn’t until the afternoon that we finally found water. But we had learned not to panic. That lesson made us stronger and more resilient.

My neighbor listens quietly as I recount this story from one of our survival tours. We called it “nature travel.” We weren’t particularly brave or well-trained, but we always found solutions. We were pickers and gatherers, not hunters. For one to three weeks, a small group of us nature lovers would live off the land. We carried basic staples—cereals and legumes—which we sprouted along the way.

Don’t panic
Panic is a uniquely human experience. Animals feel fear, but they don’t panic. Panic is the fear of fear itself. In our situation, it wasn’t just thirst but also the fear of thirst that threatened to overwhelm us.
We humans create a great deal of unnecessary suffering by imagining worst-case scenarios and becoming afraid of them. But when you understand this mechanism, you can learn to recognize and observe those doom-filled thoughts rather than feed them.

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch