'Plan the impossible and do it together.'

We spent the day at Tiengemeten, an island in the delta region of the Netherlands. This place captivated me like none we've seen yet, and really like no place has in a long time. The Dutch we meet keep referring to the 'natural' areas in their country, and so far every place we have seen is completely unlike our American ideas of what is natural, closer to agriculture than anything else. Of course this country has been occupied for hundreds of years by people shaping the landscape into geometric patterns of canals, farms, and streets, so their is little if any land remaining that is untouched by humans. Tiengemeten is no exception; it was split into polders and farmed, and after the dikes were built at the mouth of the delta to cut off the water from the sea the natural tidal pattern disappeared. The island was purchased by a group in the Netherlands equivalent to the Nature Conservancy called Natuurmonumenten. With much convincing of the Dutch people who are more comfortable with a large amount of control over the landscape, they have turned the island into an estuary and type of park that feels like a wild, post-apocalyptic world. Water has returned to the area, along with the birds; the water creeps into the old road beds, forming wide, straight canals that flood their banks and appear closer to what we think of as a wetland. They have left some of the old farm buildings to decay, which eventually will turn into ruins that tell a story of the past. There are cattle roaming on part of the island still, along with several inns and a recovery home for people with brain injuries. With all of these things the place still feels incredibly remote, and a lot like the Midwest until you look out onto the horizon and see the wind turbines in the distance, and the bridges crossing the wide expanses of water, and church steeples, despite the flatness. I am becoming accustomed to the slight variation in elevation: the dikes are tall enough to block the view over them, and form a completely straight, level line in the landscape. It is so subtle, yet so powerful. It hits me in the gut, something about it. Maybe it's the immense sky, or the way the light can change as the sun passes through a hole in the dark gray clouds to turn a distant row of perfectly aligned trees a brilliant pink. This place is so captivating because of the contrast: the wildlife and the water taking over the human made landscape, yet at the same time functioning alongside it. It is a new approach to creating wildness, one that accounts for human influence and does not insist on forming a pristine wilderness out of something that has not been wild in centuries. It was dramatic, it was beautiful, and most of all, it was a group of people's impossible dream of bringing back a wild landscape made physical.