Books

"I arrived there by chance one evening, following the winding curves of the North Ridge Road, a muddy, bumpy ridge road that connects the farms of West-Burke and Sutton to each other. Without ever having the impression of having crossed a border. It wasn't until the early morning hours, when I left my New England-style wooden house, that I accompanied my hosts to their Sunday mass in Barton, in the North East Kingdom of Vermont. Intrigued by the idea that in the heart of the United States of America, I had illegally penetrated into royal territory, I decided to undertake the journey that would lead me to its confines, from the southern shores of Lake Memphremagog to the slopes of the Green Mountains, to meet the sentinels and subjects of the Kingdom. I came across the desolation of these gutted houses, as if blown down by time, abandoned by their owners, victims of industrial decline. I came across young utopian farmers who had come to experiment with an alternative life of decline, refusing mechanization, whispering in the ears of oxen and horses an unknown language. I met bear hunters with bows and arrows, taxidermists in wolf skin, the princess of the slaughterhouses, an old explorer and the woman with the log. I went from farm to farm, some opening the doors of others. And, transforming little by little my path between lake and hills into a royal quest, I asked each one the question: But where is the King? Stéphane Lavoué