God Created the Earth, but the Dutch Created Holland

by Madeleine Kando

Once more, I am visiting beautiful Holland, where my mother still lives and where I grew up. She is settled in the northern tip of this small country, her flat abutting a pristine stretch of green fields dotted with sheep, cows and horses. It is spring time and the high-pitched bleating of newly born lambs calling for their mother, fills the air. Giant white swans slowly navigate the small 'ditches', like miniature barges with elegant wings. I cannot resist driving on these tiny polder roads, barely able to keep my wheels from veering into the trenches that separate the fields.

It is miraculously beautiful. The landscape has not changed since the Dutch masters of the Golden Age immortalized it in their famous paintings. A sliver of a horizon dotted with church steeples and poplars, domed with an immense sky. The light from the intricate web of waterways, lakes, rivers and the surrounding sea is reflected back on a hazy countryside, as if it were bathed in milk.

I park my car on the edge of a lush green field that a few centuries ago, was at the bottom of the ocean. This canvas, polka dotted with yellow dandelions is now dry, separated from the tempestuous North Sea by a mighty dyke, the Hondsbosche Zeewering. Built of sand, mud, concrete and hand woven reed mattresses, the four-mile long dyke is just one of the many barriers that the Dutch have built to protect themselves against the sea.

When two elements meet, there is beauty, but there is also danger. Over the past 800 years, half of what is now the surface of Holland was reclaimed from the sea and most of the population lives in areas that are below sea level. Holland's history is the story of their struggle to keep their feet dry and were it not for the dykes, storm surge protectors, dams and sluices , the Dutch would be swimming to work.

It all started when a few Saxon tribes decided to take advantage of the fertile sediments left behind by the retreating waves of the North Sea and realized it would be smarter to create a country by building it rather than conquering it.

The struggle against the sea is not the only source of headache for the Dutch. The country is in effect a giant river delta, often called the drainpipe of Europe, where three of the continent's largest rivers, the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt dump their water into the North Sea. When Germany or France take a leak, it is Holland that has to deal with the potential problems with the plumbing. Rivers tend to meander, leisurely changing their course whenever they need to discharge excess water. Their giant tentacles slither hither and thither over the ages, leaving large areas of low-lying fertile soil behind, when they decide to change course. Those areas too are prone to flooding, especially now that rivers are gorged due to global warming. Rather than restricting the overflow by raising the dykes, the Dutch are working on a project called 'Making room for the river'. Dykes are lowered, allowing flood waters to fill the floodplains, thereby protecting the farmland behind it. Entire farms are relocated on 'terps', artificially raised mounds and made safe. Here too the Dutch are taking fate in their own hands.

On one of my excursions I take a bike ride along the coast. Two enormous dredge barges are visible in the distance, continuously spewing sand. Why would they dump sand in the water, I wonder. It seems like a futile thing to do. Later I learn that this is part of another meticulously planned nationwide project to reinforce the weak links in Holland's coast. Eager engineers have drawn a virtual grid of the entire coastline, sending out ships to measure the depth of the water, and where it is too deep for their liking they tell these giant dredgers to go and dump sand, eventually enlarging the beaches and giving birth to new dunes.

It is my second week in Holland, and my interest in this subject has morphed into a full fledged obsession. I am driving on one of the oldest dyke structure in the country, a collection of dykes a 100 miles long, encircling a large swath of the province of West Friesland. Dykes are topped with narrow, elevated roads that meander through the flat polders, crossing small villages, usually with an old church at their center. They connect farmhouses with their oversized thatched roofs, many of them still emblazoned with the shield of the castle they belonged to. The dykes skirt along vast fields of purple and pink tulips, passing by old windmills on the edge of canals so straight, they seem to have been carved out of the earth with a razorblade. The sheep peacefully grazing on the embankment, framed by an expanse of grey water in the background are not just there by chance. They are part of a long standing tradition. Grazing reinforces the grass growth and the stomping of small hoofs compacts the soil to make the dykes stronger.

The Dutch do not shy away from playing God when it comes to protecting their country from the sea. Fixed barriers such as dykes and revetments seem more protective than just dumping a bit of sand somewhere, but these permanent structures only challenges the sea and it protests by creating larger waves and increasing erosion, eventually causing a bigger problem. The Dutch are now taking a 'soft' approach; better to feed the hungry beast with sand which, like a cow, the sea will ruminate and eventually spit back at the land.

Their most daring and innovative project is the 'sand engine', an artificially created 'baby beach' which, over time will feed the existing beach, attract wildlife and reinforce the coast against the rising sea level. It is the first and only one of its kind and the world is watching closely. Giving nature a little push in the butt to do its natural work of depositing sand every time the tide comes is such a simple, yet so unconventional idea that it took humanity this long to come up with it.

Now that I no longer live here, I always marvel at the impeccable road conditions during my frequent visits. There are no longer border crossings in Europe, but the road conditions will tell you when you leave Dutch territory. But all this pales compared to the water infrastructure. When the last major flood destroyed thousands of lives and flooded a large part of the country, I was very young. The Delta Works, an enormous project that took 40 years to complete was the result; a promise the Dutch made to themselves to never let this happen again.

I grew up in Holland and I know that water is as important to the Dutch as sand is to an Arab. My memories of having to take mandatory swimming lessons in middle school, fully dressed mind you, and learning how to rescue a drowning class mate, attest to this. I skated to school over the frozen canals of Amsterdam, daring my friends to skate under the bridges, where the ice is thin. Some of us were late for our morning classes, having to go back home to change out of our wet clothes. But my fondest memories are those of skating on the lakes, the black ice singing with each stroke of the long blades on my wooden skates. Afterwards, my cold fingers clutching a cup of warm cocoa at one of the 'koek en zopie' refreshments stalls, right there on the ice. It was magic.

The Holland of picture books is just that: a picture. Holland is ecologically in dire straights. If the sea and the rivers decide to join forces to take back what was theirs at various times in the past, Holland doesn't stand a chance. But there is no telling how far Dutch ingenuity and foresight can take this small country. Only time will tell. leave comment here