Once upon a time, there was a man like all the men of the land of men, who had taken up his profession, following in his father's footsteps. He had become a master, over the years, at unearthing high-quality rosemary that could only be found on the shores of a modest village located upstream of the legendary mountain of Cap-Vert. His careful harvests generally found buyers at his village market. He led a life without worries or fuss, a predestined galley of mixed luck. Now, one equinox day, while our man was going to the neighborhood of customs, he met, on the way, the oldest fisherman in the area who grumbled to him, between two boardings:
"I recognize you... You smell of rosemary... The trade already holds no secrets for you, eh? If I were your age, I would join the breath of the open sea to haggle in another elsewhere. Long live travel... And above all, may you never be discouraged!"
The lame sailor still had a wise air about him... Going to sell his bait in new lands... The tide was low, the sky devoid of gray. At the latest, he would be back before nightfall. So our man set off, his cape in the wind, his arms laden with shrubs and ardor.
Since the dawn of time, it has been known that a shaman lived at the summit of the Cape Verde mountain. It is said that she harvested thousands of fine herbs to distill all their perfumes... From these incense-scented potions, she concocted oils and ointments to anoint the earth with her benevolent spells.
On that same equinox evening, the shaman heard the wind rattling the shutters of her cottage. Rosemary zest had even reached her keen nose, which knew how to discern grape varieties, even the rarest, even the finest...
The man was no longer laughing under his hundred-holey cloak. He had walked so much... He had followed the mistral, the north wind, climbed rocks, and wound his way through rivers. Like a compass without a magnet, his quest seemed to be unable to find the right direction. Suddenly, banks of white clouds blurred his vision, preventing him from finding any trace of the paths he had cleared. Exhausted, he now had to sleep. His only wish was that at dawn, he would wake up from such a nightmare and be safely back home.
It was the scent of citrus muscat that awakened our man, lying in the morning dew. His eyelids, lulled by the tickling of a zephyr of birds, opened in this world, breathless in the sun. The landscape embraced him wholeheartedly and took root within him, as if by magic.
“Welcome to Cape Verde… I’ve been waiting for you for a few days, thanks to the messengers of the equinox… Are you bringing rosemary? It’s a unique herb that never grows in the mountains and yet has several healing properties… Thank you for braving the wind…”
In a rustic tête-à-tête with his destiny, the man smiled at the shaman, jumped up, and took a deep breath of air so pure and fresh that his entire torso swelled with audacity and energy. Overcome with enthusiasm, he had felt the primitive call of an old nomadic stock that infused him with the mission of the antidote hunter, designating him to draw from the rainbow of solutions, in symbiosis with nature, for future generations.
The man was never seen to come down from the mountain of Cape Verde... Swapping the azure coast for the song of the wolf, he carved out a plan of his own free will, rallying his heart to the jade eyes of such a gentle wind... In this open-air bivouac, he had obeyed the abandonment of nature, its strength, which had made him a man of instinct, tattooing his freedom on his sovereign bark torso.
Leave a comment