The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono was an extraordinary, pale story about one man's efforts to help the environment. It tells the story of a shepherd's extensive and successful determination to reforest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps near Provence during the first half of the 20th century. The story is narrated by a man who is anonymous throughout the book. The story begins in 1910, when a young man embarks on a long hike through Provence, France, and the Alps. The narrator runs out of water in a treeless, uninhabited valley where there is no trace of civilization. The narrator finds only a dried-up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd who gives him water from his gourd to drink. Later, the shepherd takes the narrator to his cottage where he offers him food and a place to sleep. As the narrator stays for the night, he becomes curious about this shepherd, who lives all alone in this stone house, and decides to stay for a while longer. The widowed shepherd had decided to restore the ruined landscape of the isolated and largely abandoned valley by cultivating a forest on his own, tree by tree. The shepherd Elzéard Bouffier makes holes in the ground and plants the acorns he had collected from afar. The narrator was amazed at what this man had done on his own. It was an amazing project that not just anyone could have accomplished. The narrator leaves the shepherd knowing for sure that he would return to see what he had accomplished. He later fought in the First World War. In 1920 the man returns to the same valley. Instead of seeing a desolate valley with little progress, to his amazement there were small trees...... in the center of the card......t. By the end of 2005, across the pan-African Green Belt network, over fifteen African countries had become involved in the Green Belt movement. The movement spread beyond African borders to the United States. For his lifelong dedication to the environment and human rights, Maathai has received numerous awards, including the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Right Livelihood Award and the United Nations Africa Prize for Leadership. Furthermore, in 2004 Maathai was awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize becoming the first black woman and the first environmentalist to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was best known as the founder of the Green Belt Movement: an initiative to plant trees in forested areas of Kenya that were beginning to be used commercially. Critics wondered if a "tree planter" was really a peace activist and I'm here to say he was.