Timber

The year I lived in Paris (it was just winding up twenty years ago) I slept beneath a big reproduction of the famous Turgot map of the city, which showed the city as it appeared in 1734-36. I would wander the streets of contemporary Paris and then, returned home, check to see how much of what I saw was there already 270 years before. Since I was living in the Foubourg Saint-Antoine, more of my neighborhood was recognizable than the areas revamped under Baron Haussman. In this section of the map (it was originally published as twenty 

separate spreads, this was the sixth) you might recognize the Place des Vosges and the Île Saint-Louis, and the pre-revolution (and of course pre-opera house) Bastille. You can just make out where I was living in the upper left corner. But I share it with you today because of what's on the upper right. What are those things? Stacks and stacks, I realized, of wood. Some presumably was for building, but most will have been for heating and cooking. Before the Anthropocene, when it was living trees - not fossilized ones - that we depended on.