For an evening, our journalist Vincent Lucchese joined Étienne Davodeau for a bivouac in one of his favorite spots in Maine-et-Loire. For the comic book author, the river is a character in its own right…
A few kilometers south of Angers (Maine-et-Loire), report
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«The silkiness of the sand!» Our feet crunch as we leave tracks in the sandy banks. Among the islets of the Loire’s bed, a man leads us. It’s he who just exclaimed with joy about the texture of the ground. His name is Étienne Davodeau and this river is his backyard.
A prolific comic book author, he switches between documentary works, like Le droit du sol (Futuropolis, 2021), about the nuclear waste burial project in Bure, and fictional works, like Loire (Futuropolis, 2023), which features the river as a full-fledged character. On the evening of July 12, he takes us on an overnight bivouac in one of his preferred spots.
Unfortunately, the conditions are nothing short of apocalyptic. We are in the midst of an extreme heatwave, the third to hit France this year. A few kilometers south of Angers, we tread on what used to be an island, now connected to the riverbanks due to early drying. The flow is three times lower than usual.
The air temperature exceeds 38°C. It will only painfully drop below 30°C around 1 AM. The Loire suffers, and so do we. «I didn’t know we’d be facing this insane heat when I invited you here. It’s terrifying,» Étienne Davodeau admits.
To escape the heat, we jump into the water as soon as our sleeping spots for the night are established. The river is so shallow that we have to sit down to submerge our upper bodies. Unthinkably under normal circumstances, we stay there for over an hour chatting, without a hint of coolness forcing us to give up our new aquatic situation.
Two heads floating on the Loire. This puts us in an ideal position to discuss the author’s lifelong relationship with the river. «Spending a night on the Loire is a great way to build connections and become aware of our interdependence. What we inflict on the river, we inflict on ourselves,» he says.
A few passing egrets seem to agree. No fish, however, are present to give their opinion. The water temperature drives them away. «When I was a kid, we used to eat Loire mullets, my grandmother’s specialty. But now, they are extremely rare,» the cartoonist observes.
We won’t draw more melancholic confessions from him. For both the man and the author, the river must remain a place of rejuvenation, even if inevitably, «mourning and clarity are part of the story,» he says.
The passage of time and the alteration of things and beings, are recurring themes in Davodeau’s work. On the Loire, he has learned well about the changing nature of the world. The river, less tamed than others, is constantly reshaping itself. The islets surrounding us are not the same as those he saw on his last visit here last summer.
«I would like to think like a river.» These words, the last of his comic book Loire, he has written them again, in a larger version. The town of Ponts-de-Cé, in the southern part of the Angers agglomeration, commissioned a giant mural for the walls of the media library.
What does it mean to think like a river? «I don’t know. Figure it out,» he laughs. His explanations are more to be found in his drawings than in his words. «For me, feelings are better conveyed through drawings; I find it more subtle, more open than words. My panoramic drawings of the river are my attempt to let it speak in its non-verbal language, with its lights, atmospheres, and colors.»
These atmospheres, he has been steeped in them since childhood. He grew up in a working-class family where his father, uncle, and brothers were all passionate about fishing. Not him. He would follow along on the boat but never cared about what was biting the line. «The Loire infused itself into me during those hours of boredom, in the rolling, the smells, the light,» he muses.
To the point of feeling intimate with this entity that he willingly personifies. «Being intimate means being able to appreciate subtle changes that others don’t see, it means not having to verbalize things to understand them.»
As night approaches, we eventually return to our sandbank. The few walkers and swimmers have left the banks. We will sleep alone with the Loire, under the protective watch of bats, which have replaced herons and terns above our heads. In the absence of a campfire, due to the drought, they take on the role of keeping the mosquitoes at bay. We warmly thank them.
Sleeping by the river is not so common for Étienne Davodeau. His routine is more about cycling along the Loire. Hiking and bivouacking, he does in the mountains. «There are few things that can center and reset you as much as 15 days of mountain hiking. They are infinitely varied and nourishing landscapes. It cleans me out!»
Indeed, in the Loire region, he doesn’t need to bivouac to sleep by the water. For nearly ten years, he lived with his wife and daughters on one of the river islands. «Whenever there was a flood, the garden was completely underwater. It lapped at our windows!»
Living at the mercy of the water’s whims, accepting to be sometimes submerged and cut off from the world, this marks a population and shapes a culture. He claims to be one of those he calls «the people of the Loire». «In the valley, people know the Loire will rise one day or another. There are tragedies, of course, but generally, the water rises slowly, people prepare, help each other, get out the boats. There’s something ritualized and festive about these moments,» the illustrator recounts.
That is his people: «All these people who, without knowing each other, from the source at Mont-Gerbier-de-Jonc to the estuary, share over the 1,000 km course of the Loire this same empathy with the river. If we could harness these energies, it would be interesting for the preservation of the river, wouldn’t it?»
Rhetorical question. He who dreams of seeing a movement, capable of defending the river’s interests, embraces the political debate, in his speeches and in his works. «There are few things in our lives that are not political. This heatwave is political. Our relationship to food, to care, or to natural elements, it’s also political,» he says.
The subject of his next comic book is as political as it gets: he is working on telling the story of Social Security. Drawing gives him the freedom to discuss everything, and to embrace his subjectivity.
«Anyway, an image is never objective. Behind a camera, a film camera, or a pencil, there is always an intention. But a photo or a film can maintain an impression of objectivity. Drawing is more loyal and honest in its subjectivity; that’s its strength.»
So he draws. Having turned sixty last year, he hasn’t stopped drawing since he fell into the «intense satisfaction» of reading comic books as a teenager. He draws to pay tribute to those around him, both human and non-human, to capture the intimate and make it universal. Clinging, in this era of cataclysms, to positive stories, «also to save my own skin,» he confesses.
We wake at dawn, our beds nestled in the sand, with a dual sensation of fatigue and contentment. The two affects inherent to bivouacking. Plus, the feeling of having slept with our heads under a hairdryer, whipped as we were by the hot winds of the heatwave.
A few splashes on the surface of the river: not all the fish have disappeared, after all. Some coypus poke their heads out and quickly disappear. The Loire, against all odds, is still alive. We leave refreshed and fortified by the central message Étienne Davodeau wanted to convey: «I brought you here, first because it’s beautiful. And beautiful places do us good.»
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Hi, I’m Ashley from the Decatur Metro team. I share essential information for a sustainable and responsible lifestyle.
