Long live the laughing frog!

Bulletins from a French butcher's shop

Relations between our tiny hillside village and our administrative overlords in the town below us have rarely been rosy. We’re a bolshy bunch with a keen sense of community. There are some who have never forgiven the urban mandarins who folded us into the larger commune several decades ago. The proud little village of Montréal was annexed by the bullies of La Cluse, and together we became Montréal-la-Cluse.

So rebellion stirred when the commune decided, with next to no consultation a couple of years back, to turn part of the fields at the foot of our village into a solar farm. Our local bolsheviks arose en masse. War was declared on the mayor, the council and the evil capitalists of Total Energies, the French oil and gas conglomerate behind the solar plan. Every other house on both our streets was soon displaying placards denouncing the solar plan (“Un desastre Total!”).

It’s not that we’re opposed to solar power, you understand – several homes in the village already have panels on their roofs. But the fields in question formed part of a green buffer zone separating the village from the town. Quite apart from keeping us a safe distance from the ugly expansion of the town’s commercial interests, the fields are home to an impressive variety of wildlife, including endangered laughing frogs, nesting birds, butterflies, dragonflies and mountain goats. Yet slowly that buffer has been shrinking as factories have spread along the valley.

Photo: regular visitors to our fields

Instead of looking out on a verdant landscape that survived hundreds of years of human intrusion, the village faced the prospect of overlooking several acres of photo-voltaic panels. The local wildlife faced extinction. In an area of France renowned for its resistance to tyrannical occupation – as the Nazis found to their cost – the village of Montréal armed itself with science, ecology and history. A new French resistance movement was born.

Photo: “I’m the laughing frog. I’m protected. And those solar panels aren’t funny”

Two years on, the solar plan’s future remains uncertain, but a rather fun thing has happened. The Collective for the Preservation of the Patrimony of Montréal (CPPM) has turned into a formidable vehicle for environmental enhancement. Its beautification and preservation efforts have rallied an enthusiastic village following. Its efforts have not gone unnoticed at the Mairie (town hall).

Last weekend, peace broke out in Montréal-la-Cluse as overlords and underdogs joined forces in a charming bid to make our corner of France just a tiny bit lovelier, healthier and happier.

To their credit, the local authorities have been working on a green corridor for cyclists and pedestrians that runs for a dozen kilometres through our valley, parallel to the road and a small stream called the Lange. Known as the “Voie Douce” (‘sweet path’), it enters our village near the cemetery and follows the road down the hill to the château (photo at top; now near-derelict and owned by the council). It continues across the château’s former park towards the nearby Lac de Nantua, one of the area’s largest lakes.

Photo: The Voie Douce crossing the château park below the village

The château’s park includes the fields that are earmarked for solar farms. If the solar plan is implemented, a charming walk through a shaded valley would suddenly be interrupted by a stretch through a field of metal.

The CPPM drew up a cunning proposal. What if we planted an alley of trees beside the path to hide the view of the dreaded panels? Whatever the fate of the solar project, wouldn’t more trees in an otherwise bare landscape be of benefit to the commune?

Well, a laughing frog could have knocked me off my bicycle. The town hall agreed to foot the bill for a pilot project of saplings and bushes along a short stretch of the path in question. It also agreed to send a JCB digger with an expert team to supervise the planting.

Photos: planting underway

And that’s how several dozen villagers turned out last Sunday morning for the first phase of what may eventually become the loveliest stretch of the Voie Douce – on one side, a view of the château framed by a newly-leafy canopy. On the other side – well, who knows; the inside word is that the solar project may be in trouble. Perhaps our unspoiled fields will stay unspoiled.

After the planting, trestles and a table-top were erected and the CPPM and its supporters popped open bottles of the good stuff. There was home-made quiche and brioches and chocolate tart. The wind blew, but the sun shone and even the mayor showed up. That laughter you heard was not just the frogs.