Jordi de Sicart left Barcelona some 15 years ago to settle permanently in his house in Canejan, in the Val d’Aran, and immerse himself in a simple existence but surrounded by stimulating mountains. His commitment to defending the landscape of this corner of the Pyrenees, in the Val de Toran, has led him to allocate a large part of his savings to buy meadows and old huts to prevent them from being completely demolished or turned into chalets for tourists. De Sicart, now retired, is one of the 16 characters portrayed by David Vilaseca in Aferrats al paradís. Setze maneres de viure la natura (Ed. Sidillà).
Vilaseca, a hiker, writer and carpenter, gained the trust of thirteen men and three women with very different profiles so that they would allow him to enter their universes and tell what their day-to-day was like, light years away from a conventional life, voluntarily anchored in nature. It all started, says the author, after meeting three of the protagonists. To Albert Vidal, actor and author of performances who has sought inspiration in a 10th century farmhouse in Vidrà (Osona), without running water or electricity; the Barcelona mountaineer Joan Cassola, based in La Cerdanya, and Carles Alonso, a pioneer in the production of natural wines, in Els Vilars, in the Alt Empordà. The personality of the three impressed him and the idea of ??looking for more people who lived “with and by nature, far from consumerism and the city, each with very different visions and spread throughout the territory” matured.
He did his research, asked friends and hikers like him, and completed his list. He even ran into some alleged fraud, with a personal story so fabulous that after seven interviews he considered that it could not be true.
Of the 16 selected, “there are some who are very surly, some very reluctant to give me clues to get to their house, in the woods, others I never got their phone number and I had to go directly looking for them. I have always presented myself as a hiker and a bricklayer, if they know that you are from the mountains it is easier to understand each other”, says Vilaseca.
It is intuited that some of its protagonists drink from the prophet of environmental ethics and inventor of civil disobedience, from David Thoureau and his Walden or life in the woods.
The paradise inhabited for 26 years by the climber Sara Planella, a farmhouse in Montgrony at an altitude of 1,200 meters, in Ripollès, can only be reached on foot along an uphill path, half an hour walking and carrying everything she and her partner, Gil, need. As long as the body endures it compensates them. Here they have their garden, tranquility and Sara has set up a small clothing workshop. Also, whenever they can they go climbing.
Until 2019, when a forest track was opened, the only way to get to Àrreu, one of the towns in the municipality of Alt Àneu, in Pallars Sobirà, was also on foot. The last inhabitants left the town in 1981. The houses were closed giving the place a gloomy appearance but in a very beautiful environment. Eloi Pasarín left Barcelona at a very young age seeking his destiny through the Pyrenees until, in 2019, he bought a house and four hectares of forest and launched his artisan carpentry project in this village. Pasarín cuts wood according to the lunar phase and builds furniture without using nails, glue or varnish. “I am not a hermit, I have chosen this way of life, but I would not mind if more people came,” he says in the book.
Vilaseca reveals anonymous characters, perhaps the exception is the artist and writer Perejaume, whom he visited in his Montnegre creation workshop. Shepherds, mountaineers, artisans, the hermit of Montsant Montserrat Domingo and people who have learned to do everything to survive with the bare minimum in solitary enclaves parade through the pages of Aferrats al paradís.
The youngest protagonist of the book, Klaas Tanmann, who turns 37 in 2023, allows us to meet his unique family. His mother, originally from Berlin, ended up in Farrera and later in Bordes de Tressó, in Pallars, after traveling through India and Nepal. Klaas is the third of four siblings and the little girl, Catalina, came into the world on one of these boards, his home. Here Klaas and his brothers grew up self-sufficiently, they cared for the animals, they had an orchard, they made cheese and sausages… For Klaas it was not a hard life, it was natural. Here he frequently returns with his two daughters to lodge in these isolated houses, which are reached by a forest track ten kilometers from Farrera, people who he wants to disconnect from the city.
