"One day, during the war, I was asked to find an empty strip of land on the plateau deValensole where Allied planes in difficulty could land. I find a large field that fits the bill but there's a magnificent three-hundred-year-old walnut tree in the middle of it. The owner of the field was willing to rent it to me, but stubbornly refused to cut down the beautiful tree. I eventually told him why we needed the land, whereupon he agreed. We start clearing away the soil around the base of the tree; we follow the taproot.... At the end of the root, we find the bones of a knight buried in his armour. The man must have been a mediaeval knight...and he had a walnut in his pocket when he was killed, for the base of the taproot was exactly level with his thigh-bone. The walnut tree had sprouted in the grave."
René Char, Hypnos, footnote to fragment 220. Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1946 / Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2021.