The «paths of trees», these plant cathedrals established(constituted) by a way - path(way), road, street, channel(canal) - lined on both(all) sides with a colonnade of trees and covered generally with a vault, establishes(constitutes) a cultural heritage, natural and environmental. The five centuries of traffic(circulation) of ideas and of papers, professionals and their sponsors(sleeping partners), trees themselves, led(drove) to a wide distribution(broadcasting) of this type(chap) of arrangements(developments) in Europe and in world.
When the 1st World war bursts, 3 million trees along the French roads are counted. These "paths" in military rigour canalise all energy of troops towards the forehead(front). More and more shredded and incomplete at the approach of the forehead(front), they become a key for reading the imminence of horror. When they remain(subsist), they breathe hope by calling back(by reminding) the existence of an order before chaos.
Paths strongly marked the soldiers, in particular those come from the Commonwealth, discovering the exoticism of our landscapes. They inspired in 1915 the wish of the British officer Gillespie to see creating, at the end of war, a route of pilgrimage in the form of a «long path (…) from Vosges to the sea». At the end of war, memory paths were crashed in Australia, but also in New Zealand, in Canada, in the United States, in Great Britain, in Italy, inspired, directly or indirectly of European roads lined with trees.
Just after the centenarian(centenary) of the Veteran's Day, the international, first colloquium to be entirely devoted to the paths of trees in France, puts a spotlight on this history(story) and on the actions(shares) of promotion(valuation) committed(hired) today in the different countries by the citizens and the public authorities.
By underlining the capacity of paths to create links and to serve the idea of cohesion and of peace, colloquium aims at encouraging putting in echo of places by paths, existent or at recreating, and the plantation of cross-border paths, tangible signs of strong relations between citizens. Colloquium will also throw(cast) the concrete bases of cultural and tourist routes structured by paths of trees.
Diverse complementary(additional) actions(shares) are planned(provided for) in 2018 and 2019: video and comic strip of the colloquium, in French and in English, exhibition(exposure) and artistic collaborative installation, on same theme as colloquium.
To know more about the paths of trees, it will be possible to refer to the white paper «road Infrastructures: the paths of trees in landscape», published by the Council of Europe in «Facets of landscape. Considerations and proposals for the implementation of the European convention of landscape».