As we follow a trail across the Alberas – the lower ranges of the Pyrenees as they dip towards the Mediterranean – I am stopped in my tracks by an outgrowth of woody root-stuff in my path, in the shape of a man. It is quite perfect in form, and the thought crosses my mind that it is sitting there with intent, and that it possesses intrinsic intelligence. After we have moved on, I am reminded of that other root, the mandrake, which was once considered to possess magical properties, and which, because the plant contains hallucinogenic alkaloid properties, probably did.

Returning to the village, I pick up a book by John Berger. Berger’s relationship to landscape, especially the landscape of the French Alps where he made his home, resonates powerfully with me, which is to say, I stand in awe of him.  He writes, in Bento’s Sketchbook, of his deep and longstanding debt of gratitude to the philosopher Spinoza, interjecting his own text with snippets from his seventeenth-century mentor. He also draws, and his sketches accompany the text. He says of this: ‘We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination.’ Under which, I have scribbled, in pencil  – how true! – & not only of drawing . . . On the facing page, a quotation from Spinoza ends with the words: ‘So although we do not remember that we existed before the body, we sense nevertheless that our mind in so far as it involves the essence of the body under a species of eternity is eternal and its existence cannot be defined by time or explained by duration.’ And it occurs to me that the little man-root that popped into my path earlier in the day, up there on the mountain, appeared just there, just then, in order to point the way to my incalculable destination, also.