A giant toad crawls from underneath the metal sculpture in the garden. I’ve seen him before but didn’t know until now where his house was. A young blackbird sits on top of the squirrel feeder while the father and mother bird take turns diving into the peanut butter and putting the best bits (the maggots I assume) in their offspring’s beak. In the meantime the squirrel hangs upside down the little silo with seeds on the other side of the garden, trying to squeeze some sunflower seeds out of it. I didn’t sow sunflowers this year and even if I would have, they wouldn’t have flowered. The last time I tried, the mice destroyed them just when I thought I would actually manage to grow something in this forest soil. There are more mice this year than ever and they are bolder than other years, maybe because there are so many of them. They destroy the insulation under the floor and dig holes everywhere but at the same time I love watching them run around, just like I get excited when now and then, in winter, I catch a glimpse of the pine marten (martes martes). They are party animals, wreaking havoc on the attic and keeping me awake at night but if you live on the edge of a forest, you have to be willing to share your space with the other creatures living there.
I own half of this little wooden house I’m writing this in, slowly preparing for my long walk, but I am not sure what "owning" means exactly. It means I can be there whenever I want (as long as the other owner doesn’t want to be there), but I can’t live here officially. It means I can let friends stay, but I can’t rent it out. It is part of a park with specific rules and although I call the garden mine, it isn’t really and not just because I share it with the trees and the plants and the multitude of animals. I pay rent for the land and if the owner ever decides to sell it, the house will be worthless.
The forest and the Veluwe heath houses an interesting mixture of creatures. In the morning I often encounter the wild boar living there, sometimes deer. There are areas I don’t have access to officially because they are “resting areas” for the animals and anybody who wanders around there will be fined, as will anybody who is caught walking around before sunrise or after sunset. On the heath I often find traces of the sheep and sometimes I see them from a distance, guided by a shepherd and 2 sheep dogs, in full control of the flock’s movements. At night they are kept in a sheepfold with electric fences because wolfs roam around. There are solitary walkers like me, people walking their dogs, groups of mountain bikers, people flying their little airplanes, kids on motorbikes (Wednesdays and Saturdays only), elderly duo’s on identical electric bikes in similar outfits (usually aiming for the restaurant in the middle of the forest). Romans marched here, prehistoric burial mounds can be found throughout the forest - once you know what they look like you will spot them, in this flat country a little hill is easily more than just a little hill - and in a hidden spot - hidden before they put signage all over the forest - there are the remains of a big underground shelter that was used to hide people during WWII.
I like to walk through the part of the forest where the dancing trees are, the area where the locals once had the right to cut trees and took all the straight ones, not only because it is a beautiful part of my surroundings but also because there are a lot of mushrooms there, especially oyster mushrooms. It is not allowed to take anything out of the forest (not even leaves) but you won’t be considered a poacher if you harvest them carefully and not take more than 250 grams. Still it is officially hard to get them because wandering off the paths running through the forest is, you have probably guessed it already, not allowed.
I’ll leave it to your own imagination to what extend I trespass in this country. I can only say that when I do it, I do it with care and love, to get closer to nature and to understand better.
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