The moment I stepped onto the platform, I felt a jolt of angry energy. Growlers wearing black knit caps and bandanas were milling around the tunnels of the Metro station. As I climbed up the stairs, a dozen young men and women swept past me, hurrying out into the night. It took me a few seconds to realize that I had just encountered a tribe of New Luddites. I had seen a few “Children of Ned” on the streets of New York and London, but never a group of them together. They were easy to pick out among the growlers because they always wore a fragment of the natural world pinned to their clothing or attached to a cord around their neck: a feather, a bone, or a sprig of ivy. I followed them out of the Metro and found myself on the Champs-Élysées. It was a wide, straight boulevard with a sidewalk on each side. A row of old-fashioned lampposts created a sequence of soft yellow dots that lead to the Arche de la Défense. I pivoted around and gazed up at the Arc de Triomphe. The massive arch was lit up with spotlights and the white marble facade appeared to glow with its own energy.
