Day 8 – The Sun Shines on Oosterland

“What do you think of the windmills?” Johan asks as we cycle the dike path on our way back from shopping in Hippolytushoef. The sun is just starting to shine, our bodies are somewhat stronger, and the wind feels good as it breezes past our faces.

He doesn’t mean the cute iconic wooden ones, with their quadrangle of plaited wooden wieken (blades) loosely covered in sheets of canvas to catch the wind, the giant girth of the mill covered in a womb of cozy thatch. So gezellig. No, he means the now pervasive steel pinnacles, same the world over, whipping their three thin straight arms round and round in a drone of mechanical monotony. “I don’t like ‘em,” I answer. A blight on the landscape. No character. Too industrial. But yeah, I get it. They’re saving the world – or at least trying to – and it’s better than mining and burning gas and coal. Right?

The thing about Holland, apart from its sub-aquatic position in the world, is the unique way it marries ancient and modern civilization, nature and technology, beauty and starkness. Whatever Holland was in ancient times bears little resemblance to the Netherlands of today. There's hardly any earth that hasn't been moved. From a house atop a small mound surrounded by a boggy marsh and prone to periodic inundation, the early Dutch started digging as means of survival. Gradually, day after day, year after year, generation after generation, they filled in the wetlands till their humpies became villages, towns, cities and eventually polders. But that wasn’t enough to keep the sea at bay so their earth-moving prowess turned to creating dikes, rims of earth and rock that circled their towns and blocked their views of the sea. At least they were protected.

Then came the windmill, clever Dutch devices to pump water along the canals that were invented to channel the excess water that comes with living on a boggy land. The Dutch windmill was never meant to generate electricity but to move water, eventually all the way back to the ocean where it gets pumped up and over the dike and dumped back into the sea. The iconic totem of Dutch civilization became an endearing trademark of the earnest and industrious low-landers the world over.

So it seems a shame to me that, as technology continues to gobble up our cities and landscapes with its mundane, homogeneous aesthetic, we’re forced to accept the modern windmill, perhaps the world’s most uninteresting vertical architecture. You can’t complain about it, even as hundreds, thousands of them pock the landscape of nearly every country on earth (and surrounding sea), or you’re accused of being a climate denier, which is akin to being stupid. So we’re stuck with these steel monoliths, ravaging what’s left of the bucolic countryside in the name of Progress and Saving The Planet.

‘What do you think of them?” I ask back later. Johan’s eyes are puffy and a bit moist from his not-Covid illness (he tests negative again this morning) but they grow even more so as he ponders my question. “I love them! They’re so much a part of the Dutch landscape, my history, the image I have of what Holland is—”

“Wait,” I stop his gush. “I’m talking about the steel ones. The energy-generating modern windmills you see everywhere.”

“Oh,” he says, and the fire goes out of his eyes. “Well, I can’t say much about it. As a good Dutchman I have to look at the practical side first, the value they offer. I don’t really give it much thought about how they look; what’s the point?”

Well, for one, the point is that we’re losing the loveliness of the land, the amazing way the Dutch have managed to weave beauty into an otherwise dull panorama. Living on a flat land doesn’t offer much help in creating stunning natural landscapes, so the Dutch figured out early on how to micro-manage beauty: by creating quaint villages with meandering streets, Hobbit-like dens, decks, and moorings all nestled in verdant gardens that delicately twine down to the ubiquitous canal that seems to be a given in everyone’s backyard. Habitable land is a prime commodity in a watery bog so the Dutch have also become masters of tiny living: their houses for starters, but every one seems to have an even tinier hut in their remarkably tiny backyards. I guess these are used as garden sheds, or art studios, or -- for the modern entrepreneur -- a rentable room on AirB&B.

Spending the afternoon cycling through Den Oever, Hippolytushoef, and back to Oosterland has renewed my appreciation for Dutch ingenuity and artistry. These charming ancient villages, once so remote and independent, are slowly getting swallowed up by the Modern World – fast-paced highways, industrial enterprises, and fields upon field of whirling windmills stalk the landscape. But viewed from a bike on a slightly balmy afternoon, the wind at our back and our illness abating, it can still bring a smile to your day.

Dike biking in a stark but beautiful landscape.