When still a teenager, Geoffroy Delorme dropped out of his lonely childhood to live among the animals in the woods of Normandy – and stayed for seven years. What did it do to him?
For some time, a fox has been been sleeping in our garden. One evening I decide to follow it across the fields at the back of our house and into the forest. I step inside 10 metres, then 10 more – just enough to feel a shiver of adrenaline before turning on my heels. After that first visit, I venture a little further each evening. As soon as the house is asleep, I open my bedroom window, slip behind the hedge and cross the field to the big trees and the bustle of the animals.
Home-schooled, I have spent most of my childhood almost entirely alone, without friends or classmates, without holidays or school trips, and apart from these nocturnal escapades I sit in my room studying by correspondence. By the time I am 16, this life has become a kind of torture. On the day of the baccalaureate, the school leaving exam, I throw my registration letter into a maize field and resolve to spend not only my nights but also my days in the forest.
