My mountain and me
French -speaking personalities tell the strong bond that unites them to a summit in the region. Discover the series
Subscribe to access the summary in 20 seconds.
When is it in the landscape? You have to see him hit the mountain, Olivier Français, to frolic a stick in each hand. Run almost. Jump, stop and designate: “There, see, a trace of deer.” To share out. To understand that this son of scout chefs, whose best childhood memories are in Arêches-Beaufort in Savoie, established in the heights of the Diablerets the navel of his world.
At 69, he has given himself the mission of safeguarding the heritage of the Ormonts Valley. “To find out where we are going, you have to know where we come from,” he will repeat to envy. By his foundation, which he created in particular with the former liberal trustee of the Diablerets, his friend Philippe Nicollier, he gives life to abandoned sites. This path which he tumbles, they call it between them the senator’s path. It was surely a way of schoolboy, too narrow to pass the cattle there, Olivier Français discovered it and strives to make it revive. “I walk around with a shovel and a pickaxe,” he explains. There, I urge, I pass with a motor tractor, I clearer with a machine. I grind the wood with another. ”