Europe: Netherlands Heather

On the evening of Monday, the 3rd of September, I was safely at my next destination: a village named Eerbeek in eastern Netherlands. Mary and Elly are my hosts, connected to me through a complicated chain of people (my fiancée’s grandma’s neighbors friends). They welcomed me into their home with warm smiles and a giant plate of green bean casserole and mashed potatoes. Since then, they haven’t stopped lavishing generosity on me.

Our first big excursion was to a National Park called Hoge Veluwe. First we visited the art museum there— I’ve written an extensive entry about that for tomorrow. Then we left the masterpieces behind and set out in the car to see some real Dutch landscape.

We saw it soon enough: rolling mounds of sandy earth covered in clumps and patches of flowering heather. I had never seen anything like it, and I laughed in delight at the sight of a plant that shows up in practically every fantasy and Victorian novel I’ve ever read. Books speak of lying down in the soft heather and smelling its fragrance, and that was exactly what I did. If you sniff the flowers you don’t notice a strong scent, but the air has a light, sweet smell to it that makes you feel like you could run forever, or go to sleep. 

Mary and Elly also drove me up to one of the highest points in the Netherlands (a mountain by Missouri standards, but not by many other states’), with a view of Germany.  I stood on the little fenced-in area at the top and took in the scenery. Here, heather blanketed the hills, a soft brown-purple color that faded into the distant tree line. Mary pointed out some stout ponies standing nearby, telling me that they live wild on these hills. Still, they are tame for the tourists, and I rubbed their noses as I looked out at the scenery.

See the long tail on the sheep behind me? They were all like that.

The next day, Mary and Elly took me on an excursion Dutch style: on bicycles. As usual, I was pretty wobbly, but I went the whole day without running into anything! We biked out to another National Park called Mooi Gelderland, gliding under conifers and through corridors of broad-leaf trees. We rolled along sandy paths between clumps of heather beneath a moody gray sky, and at last ended up at a little hollow with a pond. I wandered the hills a bit, staring at the birds perching on dead trees, and cows in the distance. Then I returned to my hosts for a picnic on the grass.

On our way home, we found a flock of sheep wandering about. I stopped to pet them, and then I noticed that they all had long tails. It was at this point that Mary informed me that sheep do, in fact, have tails. They are just cut short to make the sheep easier to keep clean. My mind was blown.

The Netherlands landscape is similar to the Midwest in that there’s nothing terribly impressive about it. It is simple beauty. It rests easily on the eyes and rolls out before you like a scroll. Because it’s pretty, because it’s simple, I love it all the more.

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