Getting lost in Drenthe, far beyond the downloaded cycling route

I once emigrated to Drenthe for the beauty. Nature was always limited in the Zaan region, stopped by a dike or a front of factories. The one around Norg was inexhaustible. You cycled out of the village and you drowned in an exquisite variety of landscapes; forests, heath, pasture, sand drifts, peat bogs and fens. I never understood why you would want to know the way there. My definition of freedom is getting lost.

The Dutch cyclist sees it differently. The planned, printed or downloaded cycle route with numbered nodes guarantees him that he will not get stuck in an unsavory business park and gets what the description promises. The Roldertoren route on the Roldertoren route: „For centuries, travelers in this area oriented themselves on the Roldertoren. The tower of the Jacobuskerk in Rolde could be seen for miles around.” Look, there we’ll have him! To enjoy! The viewer only wants beauty, while it is precisely the contrast with the violated world that opens his eyes. That’s why I rarely met anyone on my bike rides. I never followed a route, just wandered around.

Back in Drenthe I saw how the cycling day tripper avoids the unpredictable. He is one of the most pampered tourists in the country. He can get in right away. If the signage is correct and he sees enough points of interest, he is satisfied. Response from an ANWB customer: ‘Beautiful and clear route through forests and past farms. Super route, only sign 99 is missing.’

It fits with what you think you know about the Dutch leisure experience. People start to see something concrete, such as visiting museums to have art explained to them. Everything seems feasible, even looking. But nature is a myth. When I first moved to Drenthe, I saw her superficially, like a postcard. I paid tuition for that. In his autobiography Der green Heinrich tells the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) about his first attempts at painting a tree. He finds his dream tree. It is enticingly free in space, so clear in detail and contour ‘that I thought I could control its shape with little effort’.

Unfortunately. Because of the details he no longer sees the whole, which in turn is part of something bigger. The image of the tree is determined by external factors such as sunlight, which illuminates it with permanently changing color accents. The tree, Keller sees, is his context. It is not tangible to the eye alone; who wants to be experienced.

Exactly. The secret of nature is what the invisible or incorporeal of wind and light does to the visible. For that you have to slow down the gaze. Learn to see how the wind animates the high grasslands, changes the even green for the lay eye into a ballet of color and light. So you ride at my pace, which everyone finds unbearably slow and yet is the right thing.

Predicted heat

On a beautiful Saturday I drive from Groningen to that pearl of the Drenthe landscape, the Balloërveld. No tourist to be seen. Impossible. I cycle through beautiful tree-lined avenues. Poppies prick the retina unnaturally bright red from the roadsides. Paradise has begun, there should be a storm.

A little further on it suddenly does, out of the blue. Why? Because of this; I enter the ANWB zone of the Saxony Route, code name LF 14, 332 kilometers of picturesque delight from Lauwersoog to Enschede. The day tripper picks out a piece of Drenthe. The site Nederlandfietsland punt nl chews for what needs to be seen: “Prehistoric burial mounds, dolmens and remains of medieval cart tracks adorn the robust landscape.” There are the leisure squads, smartphone holders on the handlebars. At a T-junction I see them comparing three instructions: “You had links, didn’t you?”

And I there but stupidly aimlessly dreaming, happy with everything. There are still lambs on the Balloërveld. In their jumping is the pure joy of childhood. I could cry with happiness, the heath is so beautiful. I see the sun cutting isolated Keller trees from the sky, verdigris foliage and bronze trunks. Thus light transcends matter.

I can hear my tires crunching in the sand, fifty years after the first time. I have not changed. Lambs are still dancing in my head. The only difference seems to me that my happiness knows what it is, a chosen state that you only recognize when it seems too late. But I found something on that. Just cycle back.

See, in Rolde the terraces are full. Of course, there is the Roldertoren.