This story begins a few years before the First World War. One day, while walking in a barren area below the Alps, a young hiker encounters an old shepherd and his dog.
The hiker is unable to find water, and the shepherd shares not only water, but also a meal and shelter. That evening the young man watches as the shepherd goes to a sack and picks out a hundred perfect acorns. These he will plant the next day, as he has so many days in the past and will so many days in the future.
While others pursue the affairs of the greater world, this shepherd continues his work through two world wars until, at last, he creates a miracle.
The Man Who Planted Trees has been taken by some as about tree planting, and that is the perfect illustration of not seeing the forest for the trees. The book is about much more than trees. It is a book about how to live your life, and about how a life well-lived influences countless others.
The story has been set to music by The Paul Winter Consort (Robert J. Lurtsema narrator), and is an Oscar-winning animated film (narrated by Christopher Plummer).
If Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is the perfect story to read or watch at Christmas, then The Man Who Planted Trees is the perfect story to read or watch at the beginning of each new year.
From The Man Who Planted Trees:
--"The shepherd went to fetch a small sack and poured out a heap of acorns on the table. He began to inspect them, one by one, with great concentration, separating the good from the bad. I smoked my pipe. I did offer to help him. He told me that it was his job."
--"When I reflect that one man, armed only with his own physical and moral resources, was able to cause this land of Canaan to spring from the wasteland, I am convinced that in spite of everything, humanity is admirable."
"But when I compute the unfailing greatness of spirit and the tenacity of benevolence that it must have taken to achieve this result, I am taken with an immense respect for that old and unlearned peasant who was able to complete a work worthy of God."
