12 Photos from 2012

Here we are, the last day of 2012. The world did not in fact end, and, in that same vein, a lot of other things didn’t end as well— namely the lives of my mom and my brother Eric, who both had horrible complications with appendicitis earlier in the year (Eric also got hit by a truck. Way to keep your guardian angels on their toes, guys). As has been the case the past three years, I come to December 31st overwhelmingly grateful that everyone in my family is alive. It’s a good way to get some perspective.

More than that, though, this is an especially good New Year because of the man who loves, protects, and cherishes me: not as a boyfriend or fiancée, but now as my husband. This is a new chapter of my life, and I’m excited about the life Zachary and I are building together.  I’m sitting in my townhouse with my new last name and rings on my finger and a Christmas tree while snow falls outside, working on my online job that has allowed me to travel and now allows me to mold my schedule around my husband’s. It’s a good day.

So, without much ado, here are 12 photos of some of the neat places I’ve been in 2012. Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone!

January: Hanging out on the beach in San Diego with Mary.

February: Hiking at Multnomah Falls, Oregon, with Zachary.

March: Hiking at Redwoods National Forest, California.

Later in March: Visiting Mary at her new workplace (aka SeaWorld San Diego).

Late May: Christian and I soaking in more sun in San Diego on a trip to visit Mary.

July: Playing at Cornerstone Music Festival with Insomniac Folklore. Zachary proposed three days later.

August: Hiking alone near the fairy-tale city of Salzburg, Austria.

September: Cycling with Mary and Elly near their home in the Netherlands.

October: Reunited with my family, at a picnic at Pere Marquette State Park, Illinois.

December (out of order, I know): Mikko playing with Eric and Sarah's Christmas puppy, Willow.

November: Getting ready to walk to the altar with my lovely bridesmaids, Ivy, Sarah, Mary, and Amy.

Caught for life… and couldn't be happier!

Where to Go: Openluchtmuseum, Arnhem, Netherlands

A fisherman's cottage. People were shorter back then.

Yesterday, Mary and Elly took me to an open-air museum that has the catchphrase, “Holland in Just One Day.” While most places claim that you could spend all day there, this Openluchtmuseum really lives up to that. With several dozen historic buildings, not to mention all the living history programs, the museum is large enough that you could arrive at opening (10:00) and stay until it closed at five, and you still might not see everything.

Why you should go: If you want to get a sweeping view of the Netherlands’ history from the 1600s to the present, this is the place for you. I enjoyed the sense of time that I felt as I touched the reed-roofed buildings and thought about life in the “olden days.”

How to get there: Arnhem is a city in eastern Netherlands. The museum is accessible by car (4,50 euros for parking) and public transit.

Inside a wealthy farmer's house.

What to bring: The museum costs 14,95 euros. Bring good walking shoes, a backpack with snacks and water, a camera, and some spending money. You can even take along your dog, as long as it’s on a leash.

What to do: Get a map at the front desk and wander from building to building. You’ll encounter several windmills (you can go up in the biggest one), cottages from different eras, a Protestant church, a maze, old tollbooths and weigh-stations, farmhouses, barns, fields full of old crops and goats, and all sorts of miscellaneous structures. While some of the displays are only in Dutch, the plaques outside each building have a section in English. Mary, Elly and I got an olde-time photo taken, and also sat outside to eat traditional poffertjes, pancakes the size of coasters and served with butter and powdered sugar. 

What else you need to know: You probably won’t see everything if you take your time, so look at the map and prioritize. Then take a deep breath and plunge into the world of the Netherlands, past and present!

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Europe: All the Pretty Little Horses

Hush a bye,

Don’t you cry

Go to sleep-y little baby

When you wake

You shall see

All the pretty little horses

Dappled and gray

Black and bay

All the pretty little horses.

Mom sang this lullaby to me often when I was a little girl, because she knew it was my favorite. She sang, I closed my eyes, and I imagined all the horses that I would own someday. Every little girl wants a horse. I was no exception. 

When I was about seven, I began learning everything I could about equines, from the visual clues for breed identification to proper dressage technique in the English saddle. I determined that I would get an Arabian horse and use paper strips instead of straw in its stable. I read The Pony Pals series from beginning to end, in order. When we visited my grandparents in rural Illinois, my favorite activity of the day was taking a walk with Mom to the edge of town to visit the horses who lived there and feed them grass.

Years go by, and I found out that I didn’t really want a horse after all. But still, the sight of horses, their smell, the feeling of their hair when you pet their cheek or flank— these are magical to me, and always will be.

Thanks to Mary and Elly, the past few days have been full of all the pretty little horses. Mary took me out for a cart ride with Yonker, a black Shetland pony who spends his days grazing with several other horses. First she showed me how to groom him (I knew it all in theory from my research 16 years ago, but had never done it before), and then we hitched him up to an elegant cart. For an hour we would our way through the countryside, past cornfields and green pastures and through hallways of trees lining the road. The cart bounced and rattled pleasantly and Yonker trotted along with an absent-minded attitude, glancing around as if he was enjoying the scenery as much as we were.

The next day (yesterday), Mary let me accompany here to a cart-driving lesson. We hopped into the cart again and set off straight across an empty field. I watched hot air balloons floating in the distance, and the wide open sky deepening from blue to pastel purple. A stork flapped his way over the tree-line.

One of Mary’s fellow students, a woman named Mika, allowed me to ride on the back of her horse-cart. I rode along for the entire lesson, sometimes just enjoying the scenery, sometimes grasping the cart with both hands as the horse galloped through the course laid out in cones. It was better than a carnival ride! Then Mika asked, “Would you like to drive?” I gasped, and I felt like putting on a pretty dress and twirling in a circle and clapping my hands for joy. Instead, I practically squealed, “Yes, please!”

I sat in the driver’s place and took the reins. Mika showed me how to hold them so I could “feel the mouth,” and then we were off. The horse, a mare who had been pulling carts for most of her 21 years, knew how to walk between the cones and move at the slightest direction, so I had no trouble driving her. We did one figure-eight through the cones at a walk, and then one at a trot. I couldn’t stop grinning.

Today I also got to ride bareback for a few minutes. We were cleaning the stables for some horses that Mary and Elly’s friends own, and Mary showed me how to hop on the back of the misnamed horse Fury. He calmly walked around the enclosure with me trying my hardest not to fall off. I succeeded, and dismounted with an easy swing of my leg. Again, I was grinning. 

“You smile so wide I am afraid it will swallow your ears,” Mary said. It’s a legitimate concern. After all, it’s not every day that I get to be around an animal that will always be, at least to me, magical.

~~~

Where to Go: The Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” ~Vincent Van Gogh

Cafe Terrace at Night, one of my absolute favorite Van Goghs.

Take a day trip from Amsterdam, find your way into the heart of the national park Hoge Veluwe, and you will discover one of the art gems of the world. The Kröller-Müller Museum is a treasure trove of art, especially from one of the Netherlands’ most famous artists: Vincent Van Gogh. 

Van Gogh has always fascinated me: not only his work, but his way of seeing the world. His mental instability and his constant search for something new and fulfilling made him unhappy for most of his life, but from that sadness blossoms the fruit of his work: full-bodied figures, landscapes that crackle like fire, and brushstrokes of such skill that they bring tears to my eyes.

Mary and Elly took me to the museum and turned me loose in the galleries, where I wandered in a trance from painting to painting. I saw some of my all-time favorites by Van Gogh. Most impressive to me was Cypresses with Two Women. I can show you a photograph, but it can’t convey the brushstrokes. They jumped off the page, robust and vivid, piled on so thick that it almost looked like a relief. The trees are tangles of olive flames, quivering on the canvas. The trees, like the trees in most of his paintings, are alive.

Zelfportret, 1867

I spent a long time looking at Van Gogh’s Zelfportret, 1867. His eyes stared at me. Not empty, like the eyes of a photograph. He put his heart and soul into his work, and they are still there, still caught up in the brushstrokes, staring out at me. He looks exhausted, a bit wary, trying to decide whether to be intrigued or apathetic. I wish I could talk to him. I wish I could tell him about the millions of people who appreciate his art, and tell him how much his paintings move me. But the canvass is silent, and his body is dust in the grave. So I just give a nod to the painting, wipe the tears from my eyes, and move on.

~~~

Why you should go: Even someone who knows nothing about art will recognize a few of the paintings on display, and art enthusiasts need to bring a jacket because they will get chills every time they turn a corner and see another masterpiece. You’ll find art by Georges Seurat, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gaugin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and many others as well.

How to get there: The museum is nestled in the heart of the Hoge Veluwe National Park in the Netherlands. By bus or car it’s only a couple hours outside of Amsterdam. I will let the museum’s website do the talking.

What to bring: The fee for park entrance and museum admission is 16,40 euros for adults (unbelievably worth it). Bring a purse or knapsack instead of a backpack; you’ll have to wear it in front or lug it around with one hand. 

What to do: Not only is there a spacious indoor section, but the museum also features a large sculpture garden. Take advantage of both these features and make an afternoon of it. Also, if you have a few extra euros, check out the local organic food at Monsieur Jacques, located inside the museum. I had the most amazing Brie sandwich in the world there.

What else you need to know: It’s not a huge museum, so feel free to take your time. It features a lot of modern art, so you can skip a big section of the displays if you’re not interested in blank canvasses and blocks of wood. Finally, you should learn how to pronounce the artist’s name in his native language. Say “Vincent,” with a nondescript European accent, then follow it with “von,” and end by saying a throaty “aw” with a huge clearing of your throat before and after the vowel. “Dank u wel, Vincent Van Gogh. Dank u wel.”

Country Road in Provence by Night. It was so beautiful that I cried when I saw it.

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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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