In France (as elsewhere in the world), nature is not natural (it did also never been), but cultural. In other words, it is men who, through their work, shaping and shaped the nature, who have mastered and controlled, its management, giving the landscape the look that is theirs, often admirable, and under which we see them. This is true in the Queyras and elsewhere, although part of nature - the mountains, the rocky, steep ravines - to be away from men so that they have abandoned the process.
In fact, these landscapes are also historical, which means that over the centuries, depending on the work that produced them, landscapes change. Here's how VA Malte-Brun in 1882 in France is illustrated, described the valley of the Guil, between Château-Queyras and Old Town:
"fields where flax, barley, oats and rye to come a very great height grasslands through which meanders Guil, and extending as far as the vast forests of larch, which crown the mountains on these pastures and vast wealth of rare plants, including the hamlets Most of them are inhabited only during the summer, channels which, on scaffolding supported by masses of rock above the Guil, bear fertility one side of the valley to the other: this is the aspect of the country. "
Today, the appearance of this portion of the valley is quite different. Malte-Brun describes an agricultural landscape. In fact, there are no cultivated fields, raised more channels. The hamlets of summer pastures are often in disrepair, meadows mowed less often.
This is the forest. Two centuries ago, Queyras was less wooded than it is today. Long, the forest has been a resource for communities large, whose control has resulted in protracted conflicts (see the article on trials). During the long period of prosperity and population growth in the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the area occupied by forests has declined, despite the measures taken to prevent massive deforestation, which has had consequences for their price of softwood work, more rare (Abbot Gondret evidenced in his Historical Memoirs). It has used the stone to replace the wood. In the 1860s, a forestry law was passed, which encouraged municipalities to preserve forests and, through tax incentives, to replant forests in land left fallow.
This is the hayfields. The example of pre Michel, located by the lookout Viso, in the town of Ristolas, is enlightening. As shown by the authors of a pamphlet published by the Regional Natural Park, the forest is gradually gaining on the meadow here and elsewhere across the Queyras since 1920 or 1940, for every field, from the moment he ceases being broke, are sprinkled in a few decades of aspens, then returns to forest. Photos du Pasquier, a hamlet in the town of Arvieux, taken in 1930 show a landscape near an altitude of well-defined and well maintained as if the grass had been combed through. Sixty years later, these basins, which are no longer broke, have gradually earned by shrubs.
Eventually, landscapes, made with terraced plots and hayfields, which for centuries have been typically Queyrassins, specific agricultural high mountains and are the work of men, may in a near future, when the last farmers have closed their stalls, to disappear and be made a sort of bush and tree in the forest. There are still a few, he must hurry to see. Thus, Saint-Veran. In July and August, in front of the village on the left bank of the White Aquamarine, the alluvial fans of a few torrents, free of any stone, probably irrigated and can be smoked in the spring or fall, are still broke. We admire the work of secular men who paved the midst of these shapeless rubble patches sharply defined, have maintained with loving care (imagine the long hours that all this need), and the grass cut flush varies from light green to dark green. This is one of the finest and most moving mountain landscapes that are can see in our country.
This is the terraces that are (or were when they were still maintained and visible) forms an essential part of the landscape Queyrassins. The terraces, they are dry stone walls or earth banks covered with grass that used to hold the topsoil and can cultivate steep plot. The slopes of clever, over or around the villages are organized well. A century ago, when the mountain was a hive of activity, it has the appearance of an immense garden sloping landscape, which unfortunately, is disappearing along with its authors, namely the farmers. For, in the mountains, they are also farmers who have made landscapes. The maintenance of the terraces is virtually assured, the meadows are mowed less often. The commons, that animals once grazed in the spring, are no longer in that wasteland weeds and shrubs. The consolidation that took place in Queyras, with difficulty, has eliminated the smaller plots.
In short, the landscape of Queyras, whose main characteristic is to be cultural, shaped by human hands, historical, changing, show how the idea of sanctuary - what some environmentalists would transform the Queyras - is a pure myth, based on the thesis Imaginary and belied by the facts of nature that has not changed since the Creation, always the same over the centuries, "natural" in some way .
