Visart's beautiful beech tree

𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐨 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲...

𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐭'𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞

Looking at a René Stevens’ map from just over a hundred years ago, you will see two similarly named paths - the Chemin du Beau Hêtre and the Chemin du Beau Chêne.

At their confluence Stevens has marked the two trees in question. The Hêtre Visart and the Chêne Debruyn. Visart’s beech fell in 1969 and at some point the path to it from the Drève de Lorraine was closed. All that remains is the short section between Lorraine and Brassine. Should you visit, a careful look will show you the path, but you may not tread there. Many decaying trees have been criss-crossed purposefully to prevent such notions.

𝐀𝐧 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰

Interviewer
Monsieur le Comte, nowadays when your name is remembered or encountered it is sometimes through old maps, like those by René Stevens, showing it attached to a mighty beech.

Visart
It amuses me, certainly. One does not expect a tree to outlast a mayor, not in a country so long accustomed to logging. Yet trees are better witnesses than men. They do not exaggerate.

Interviewer
You were already a public figure when the beech was named, in 1897.

Visart
Yes. By then I had been mayor of Bruges for many years, and I was deeply involved with the Société Centrale Forestière de Belgique. Forestry was not fashionable work. It was patient work, accounting for time in decades rather than electoral cycles.

Interviewer
That dedication coincided with a changing attitude to forests.

Visart
Quite so. Belgium had inherited habits of extraction. Forests were still seen as reserves of timber rather than living systems. After independence, and especially after the middle of the century, pressure grew. Railways, industry, shipbuilding. The forest paid.

I remember the debates in the 1880s, heated ones, about thinning, about rotation, about whether a beech forest could ever be considered complete. Many believed the Sonian Forest should be rationalised like a factory floor.

Interviewer
And you disagreed?

Visart
I argued for restraint. For continuity. A beech does not hurry. The Sonian beeches, in particular, had achieved something rare. Height, straightness, age. You do not replace that by decree.

Interviewer
The beech that bore your name was already old when it was honoured.

Visart
Very old. Already venerable. I stood beneath it during the dedication. One felt small, and properly so. That tree had lived through Austrian rule, through the French, through the Kingdom itself. It had heard axes and muskets and silence.

Interviewer
Your career also crossed turbulent times. You were in public life during the social unrest of the 1880s and 1890s.

Visart
Indeed. The strikes, the agitation for suffrage. One cannot govern without acknowledging change. Yet forests teach caution. Reform must not resemble clear-felling.

Interviewer
You later witnessed the Great War.

Visart
From the margins, thankfully. I was an old man by then. The forests suffered again. Trenches need timber. Armies are impatient guests. I feared for the Sonian Forest, as many did, but it endured. Beeches bend, but they do not forget.

Interviewer
When the great beech fell in 1969, long after your death, many mourned it.

Visart
Trees fall. What matters is what follows. If its fall taught respect, if it encouraged restraint, then it completed its work.

Interviewer
The path that once led directly to it no longer does.

Visart
That seems appropriate. Not everything requires access. Some things ask only remembrance. A forest is not a museum. It does not owe us display cases.

Interviewer
How would you like to be remembered?

Visart
As someone who argued, quietly, that forests are not problems to be solved. They are conversations that outlast us. I am content that my name rests with a tree, fallen or standing. That is a good ending.

So…

𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐦𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐬𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐲 and 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧-𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 www.bobwalks.eu ?

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