"500 kilometers on foot uncovers stories of water and people in the Netherlands"
It took only three weeks. Three weeks of putting one foot after the other, crossing rivers, following streams and puddles, to thanking their source in the sky. The journey made it possible to transform my view of water itself and the Dutch topography. The Netherlands being a small but densely populated country, its map was like a spider’s web in my head. All dots connected, rigid, with fixed roads and tracks in every remote corner of the land. I followed these roads and then I followed the water, in the meanwhile trying to understand and experience what the water meant for Dutch people.
Fenna Vesters
This journey was part of my Master Thesis that finished my master program in Environmental Communication and Management. My curiosity was sparked by my own deep connection to water, one that had been in the background of my life until I started to untangle her history and her stories. 1200 years ago, Dutch people started taking measurements to keep the “waterwolf” out as much as possible in an attempt to keep dry feet. This merciless predator came from the sea in the west and from rivers in the east, especially during spring tide and big storms.
After floods in 1993 and 1995, water management started to shift towards working with instead of against the water. The waterwolf is now slowly becoming a friend instead of an enemy, but I wondered if and how this translated to people’s daily lives. What are the stories that people tell about water? And what actually is the relationship between people and water?
Fenna Vesters went for a journey on foot to discover people’s relationships to water.
These are the questions that I addressed in my research. I hiked roughly 500 kilometers through the Netherlands following the NAP line, or the line where the sea would be without dikes, dunes or sea barriers. I listened to stories of people that lived on or near this line and saw how these shaped their relationship to water. Then, I experienced them by traveling through the landscape, seeing how the water was a character in these stories. I remember crossing the meandering river the Meuse and looking at the nature-inclusive riverbanks filled with twittering and chattering birds, while a long and heavy transportation boat just floated around the corner. Two hours later, I heard my own experiences come to life during the interview, where the interviewee talked fondly about this same river and I knew just how important my research approach had been.
In March, I shared my experiences during the Storytelling Conference organized by Mistra Environmental Communication. I realized how other participants of the conference also came to value or revalue having a personal connection to research. My own research showed, and the Storytelling Conference confirmed, the power of storytelling to bring out emotions that can lead to change, both in the storyteller (the people I met on my journey) and in the audience (me).
There is a long road ahead of retelling stories and creating new ones that reflect a different relationship to water in the Netherlands. Hopefully, there will be a time when people do not know water as the big, scary “waterwolf” that they have to distance themselves from. At least for me, the map of the Netherlands is no longer a spider’s web of tarmac and gravel. It now consists of a network of ever-changing, meandering, flowing, bright blue waterways that connect not only rivers, streams, ditches and oceans, but also people and stories.
"500 kilometers on foot uncovers stories of water and people in the Netherlands"
This journey was part of my Master Thesis that finished my master program in Environmental Communication and Management. My curiosity was sparked by my own deep connection to water, one that had been in the background of my life until I started to untangle her history and her stories. 1200 years ago, Dutch people started taking measurements to keep the “waterwolf” out as much as possible in an attempt to keep dry feet. This merciless predator came from the sea in the west and from rivers in the east, especially during spring tide and big storms.
After floods in 1993 and 1995, water management started to shift towards working with instead of against the water. The waterwolf is now slowly becoming a friend instead of an enemy, but I wondered if and how this translated to people’s daily lives. What are the stories that people tell about water? And what actually is the relationship between people and water?
These are the questions that I addressed in my research. I hiked roughly 500 kilometers through the Netherlands following the NAP line, or the line where the sea would be without dikes, dunes or sea barriers. I listened to stories of people that lived on or near this line and saw how these shaped their relationship to water. Then, I experienced them by traveling through the landscape, seeing how the water was a character in these stories. I remember crossing the meandering river the Meuse and looking at the nature-inclusive riverbanks filled with twittering and chattering birds, while a long and heavy transportation boat just floated around the corner. Two hours later, I heard my own experiences come to life during the interview, where the interviewee talked fondly about this same river and I knew just how important my research approach had been.
In March, I shared my experiences during the Storytelling Conference organized by Mistra Environmental Communication. I realized how other participants of the conference also came to value or revalue having a personal connection to research. My own research showed, and the Storytelling Conference confirmed, the power of storytelling to bring out emotions that can lead to change, both in the storyteller (the people I met on my journey) and in the audience (me).
There is a long road ahead of retelling stories and creating new ones that reflect a different relationship to water in the Netherlands. Hopefully, there will be a time when people do not know water as the big, scary “waterwolf” that they have to distance themselves from. At least for me, the map of the Netherlands is no longer a spider’s web of tarmac and gravel. It now consists of a network of ever-changing, meandering, flowing, bright blue waterways that connect not only rivers, streams, ditches and oceans, but also people and stories.