Looking back at our US trip last summer, I can say that one of the magical moments for me was seeing a baobab tree. This was at the Disney Animal Kingdom safari. The tree reminded me of The Little Prince. Without a doubt, that book is one of the milestone pieces that got me hooked on reading.
Thank you, Lord, for life's simple pleasures like books and baobabs.
Thank you, Lord, for life's simple pleasures like books and baobabs.
Exerpt from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces...
"Sometimes," he added, "there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day. But when it is a matter of baobabs, that always means a catastrophe. I knew a planet that was inhabited by a lazy man. He neglected three little bushes..."
So, as the little prince described it to me, I have made a drawing of that planet. I do not much like to take the tone of a moralist. But the danger of the baobabs is so little understood, and such considerable risks would be run by anyone who might get lost on an asteroid, that for once I am breaking through my reserve. "Children," I say plainly, "watch out for the baobabs!"
