Just as some background on Stevenson's "Travels with a Donkey." I visited the Cevennes in 2001 and hiked several short stretches of the "chemin de Stevenson," the route that Stevenson traveled. You can even rent a donkey to do the route. I saw one hiker with donkey, but of course I was on a crowded road with no place to park to take a picture. Most of the area is pretty un-touristy; the vacationers I met there were all French.

The Cevennes are still quite wild and are probably the only national park in the world that still allows livestock grazing. This is done to preserve the ecology of open meadows that has been there since Neolithic times. If left ungrazed, the area would quickly revert to thick forest.