“
No one has spent the winter here since 1962
”: in a few days, the vertiginous Bérarde road will be cut off for four long months and Jean-Marc Rochette will begin a retirement dedicated to work, ski touring and hiking. observation of wild animals.
Like the characters in his new album,
The Last Queen
, the comic book author has made this observation: "
we must flee the cities
".
This will be his third winter spent entirely in a small hamlet in the Ecrins massif (Isère) alongside his partner, his cat and a few hens, surrounded by vertical walls spinning towards peaks at 4000 meters above sea level.
The road once closed because very exposed to avalanches, no more visits except for a neighbor residing in a nearby hamlet or passing skiers.
"
It does not worry me
," laughs the 66-year-old artist, who has stored a hundred kilos of potatoes from his production in his cellar, forty trout to cook, fruits and vegetables in quantity.
“
I live like my grandparents.
My Ardèche grandmother had never been to Valence
”, in the valley.
The retreat is intended to be studious: “Four
months of work, of concentration, without solicitation
”.
On the entertainment side, there is a sauna and a Scandinavian bath in the garden, reading by the fire and ski tours.
“
The mountain here is a monster
”.
But it is also a “
mystical place, where there is a relationship to eternity
”, he notes.
"
The whole thing is to be very attentive to nature.
If it's avalanche, you shouldn't move
,” notes the young man who saw himself as a high mountain guide, until a serious climbing accident deflected him from his path.
Events recounted in the autobiographical album Ailefroide,
Altitude 3.954
, released in March 2018.
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And then there are the animals, chamois, hares and foxes: they “
feel that there are no more men and they descend.
You can see them through the window
”, smiles in his white beard Mr. Rochette, also author of a bestiary of the Alps and a comic strip dedicated to the wolf.
wild highlands
The album
The Last Queen
opens with a tribute to the last bear of the Vercors massif, shot in 1898 by a shepherd and kept since, stuffed, in a museum in Grenoble.
"
We killed five a year in the 1850s. There were a lot of bears in the Vercors
" at the time, underlines the author, who depicts them in his book in a totally virgin nature 100,000 BC ., then at different times, in front of men.
In his book, a hunter, member of a tribe living 30,000 years before our era, predicts "
the beginning of the time of darkness
" when the last of them, the "
last queen
", will disappear.
The book, in dark, even "
twilight
" colors, has as its main plot the story of Edouard, a red-haired colossus disfigured during the Great War and forced to hide his head under a bag until a Parisian sculptress, Jeanne, reshapes a face for him.
The young woman follows him from the Butte Montmartre, in Paris, where she frequents the artistic circles of the 1920s to the high plateaus of the Vercors where she is bewitched by the majesty and the savagery of the place, and where she decides to settle. with him.
The story will turn into a tragedy but its heroes, with their great freedom, "
make everything vibrate, especially her
".
Released in October, the album sold some 40,000 copies and was, among other distinctions, crowned best book of the year, all categories combined, by the magazine Lire.
It must also be adapted for the big screen by 2026.
Jean-Marc Rochette, who defines himself as "
an anarchist who does not put bombs
", will have dedicated three whole years of his life to the work, signing the entire scenario, drawings and colors.
To the point of physically breaking down on the last day, “
a bit like marathon runners who collapse at the finish line
”.
“
The last queen, as the other would say, is me
,” jokes the author.
