New Nature

New Nature. This is the term that the Dutch use to describe their brand of nature. It is difficult for them because the Netherlands have been intensively lived on for the past 3000 years or so. Every square centimeter has had a purpose and an owner for a very long time. When I first arrived I was very impressed by the neatness of it all. The highways which connect each major city crisscross the country and considering there are many major cities in each province then you can imagine how full of asphalt the country is. Most of the nature areas are painfully close to highways or byways of highways. It does make these parks easily accessible but it also means that there are very few really remote places.

The Dutch have worked very hard to have and maintain their green areas. Many of these areas are only there because they were owned by royalty or the very rich who kept them wild for their own reasons. To hunt. To have 'lots' of wild land when everyone else didn't. From what I have been able to ascertain from the history books, these areas are the remnants of a bygone age. A time when the rich and royal held tracts of land and when this no longer was really acceptable to the larger society then these were transformed into national or regional parks.

The most famous of these parks is the Veluwe. A beautiful and rather wild bit in the heart of the country. It is a mix of coniferous forest with wide swaths of heathland. It boasts quite a lot of wildlife. Ree, a kind of small deer, is quite common here. The wild boars have been getting quite a lot of press of late because it seems there are too many of them. They are starting to become a nuisance and threat to the millions of people who go to the parks for their nature walks.

There are a few national passions which are associated with the national parks or any park for that matter. The Dutch feel it is healthy to go walking in nature at least once a week. Often it is on the weekend when people are off of work. Sometimes it is on Wednesdays, which is the day when most father's take their one day of the week of to be with their kids. A wonderful program of the Dutch government designed to help the culture balance work and family. The Dutch call these nature walks 'wandelen in het bos' or wandering in the forest. Wandelen is a great word which means to stroll, but to stroll without any real destination in mind. Just walking around for the joy of it. They also call it getting a fresh nose. This means that you are getting yourself outside to get some fresh air. It is thought healthy and I must admit that even though it may or may not be truly physically healthy to do this it is certainly good for your psyche to get out of the city or town and be around trees and fields. Wander around the goats and cows. See the many birds which visit or live in the Netherlands.

Oh yes the birds. The Netherlands is a river delta. Three large rivers traverse this land and empty into the sea here. One of the very successful nature restoration programs of the last thirty or forty years is the creation of fields and marshes as habitat for migratory as well as indigenous birds. This river delta is on the stop over list of a multitude of birds, most of whom I had never heard of before I came to live here. There are even times of the year that farmers are discouraged from working their fields in order to allow certain birds to make their nests and brood.

The one thing that the Dutch don't really have, and this hurts them deeply in some secret place, is real nature. They have a term for the type of nature they do have. It is New Nature. This is the recreated natural habitats which they make and which have been very successful at bringing back many species of birds which had disappeared from the landscape. This New Nature is made up of very carefully thought up and laid out nature preserves and areas. The canals and ditches that they dig for these areas are always straight and/or go off at calculated angles to one another which reminds one constantly of the artificiality of it all. The trees are often carefully planned and planted, at least at the start of a New Nature preserve, and are sometimes allowed to 'go wild' after that but are often very carefully observed and cataloged. You don't mess with New Nature. There are very strict rules and laws about the management of these areas...and even a special police corps, the Nature Police (Milieupolitie) who are charged to make sure that things are kept up right.

For instance. It is almost impossible to cut down a tree in the Netherlands. In order to cut down a tree you must first apply for a permit to cut it down. This permit process costs quite a bit of money and allows for the people in the immediate vicinity to have a say about whether this tree is important to them and whether they agree with the proposed felling. When I was planning my move to Vermont in the U.S. I was working as a volunteer wind miller at a saw mill. I told my colleagues at the saw mill that I was allowed to buy a chain saw and to cut down any one of my trees or all of them as I wished without any kind of permit or committee having anything to say about it. They were astonished and a bit jealous.

If you were to be so brash as to decided to cut down a tree you might get the milieupolitie after you and you could be fined, and no small fine either. And who knows. You might even be required to replace the felled tree!

This passion for nature is very Dutch. Even to the point of lunacy. But they are certainly not alone in this. Two years ago there was a huge international uproar about a certain Dutch tree. There is this tree in the back yard at the Anne Frank house. This is a tree which Anne Frank herself looked out upon while she and her family were hiding from the Nazi's. I understand the emotional load Anne Frank has for many in the international community but the tree was old and was falling down. At first a tree doctor inspected the tree and said,'Well you know it is an old tree for that sort and it is in danger of falling down on the people who live in the area, it should be removed.' So there goes the Museum, going through all of the proper procedures to get the permit to have this tree removed and what should happen? The international press heard that the Anne Frank tree was going to be cut down. It sounded in the press as if this was a callous attack on Anne Frank's memory itself. There were more inches of story on this tree than on some stories of actual import. In the end the Museum stopped the process to have the tree removed and some international tree expert was brought it to make a special brace to hold the tree up so that future generations could get to see the tree that Anne Frank had stared at in her isolation. In my opinion absolute madness! It seems to me that these people are just trying to save Anne Frank herself in some twisted way. If the tree is a danger then cut it down. Follow the right procedure and just get rid of the thing. It is not any kind of attack on her memory to do this. The reaction of the international community to this was just hysterical!

Another issue concerning New Nature and the Dutch tree policy. Then Netherlands is a small country but quite wealthy. Since medieval times the Dutch have been importing their lumber because there just wasn't enough in Holland to fulfill the need that the country had. This is a trend which has continued to this day. Now, I understand that all peoples and countries have their hypocrisies but one of the current one for the Dutch is the incessant desire to have things made of wood and at the same time not being willing to use their own trees to fulfill this consumer driven desire. It is a Dutch dream to have a small garden with a wooden fence and a small wooden potting shed. So they import wood from everywhere else except for in Holland itself, and put it outside to rot in the rainy weather. After five or so years, if they don't paint their fences, which many don't because it looks nicer as real wood, these fences are all rotted and need to be replaced thus more wood is imported, etc. etc. etc.

In my travels I came into contact with a civil engineer who designed and installed windows and conservatories. During one of our conversations he told me that every window which is made of wood in the Netherlands is made of tropical hard wood. Wood out of the rain forest. Most windows in Holland are made of wood. He said that his fellow engineers and window makers used this type of wood because they believe it is better against the wet Dutch weather. Humbug he said. He had renovated hundreds of houses in which the window sills and sashes were made of pine (a very cheap and renewable type of wood) which were more than one hundred years old! He was embarrassed by the fact that the Dutch government bowed to the political will of these users of tropical hard wood by refusing to place a ban on the import of these woods. There are perfectly good alternatives which will last just as long and are logged and harvested in responsible ways.

I am 100% behind this engineer who feels the pain of the hypocrisy of this policy. A government which on the one hand makes it illegal and almost impossible to cut down a tree in your own back yard, is up in arms about the dwindling rain forests in the world and at the same time is unwilling to ban the import of these hardwoods because of economic pressures which are actually phantom in nature.

America isn't any better. That is for sure. We are just as hypocritical in many ways and on many fronts but it does not make this situation in the Netherlands any less egregious.

In the end the Dutch love their nature. They love going out into it. Designing it if it isn't there and supporting those who want to take care of and expand it. Yet at the same time they are caught in the same conundrums of any modern society trying to balance their conscience with their desires.

Finally I will relate one story that I heard that I just loved when I heard it. It is an idea which was put forward by a fellow I know, Arjen Mulder. He is a biologist and a writer who has quite a following in the Netherlands. He suggests that if the Dutch really want to get back to nature then everyone in the country should move to Limburg, the southern most province. There they should build one big city in which to live and let the rest of the country return to a natural state. It would be a very crowded city but the rest of the country would be something the Dutch soul yearns for...Real Nature.