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the monh- Telegrapa As I translated it later over a glass of jenever in Amsterdam with some intrigued Dutch friends, such was the gist of the poem that someone had stuck on a stick on the dyke embankment near Avenhorn. It was hard to grasp exactly what the rhymes were getting at. There were certainly plenty of straight horizontal lines in the vicinity, though the dykes and ditches of the flat West Friesland polderlands were all blotted out in a heavy morning mist as I stood and mused over the two short verses.
Maybe the anonymous poet had taken inspiration from the rich dark soil of the Beemster polder, a silt laid down through countless floods in times long past, now cut and laid in glistening furrows by Avenhorn ploughmen. Trying to tease out the meanings I felt sure that the creator of these beautiful but enigmatic couplets must have stood on this flood bank on a morning like this, with a north wind sharp enough to pinch the ears. The wintry fog had bleached everything in sight to tones of grey and white, and the cold earth's silty heart lay all exposed.
I turned my back on Avenhorn and on the poem and walked on, gloved and scarved and hatted against the North Sea winter. A silver quarter-crescent of sun looked through the mist, laying a dully gleaming track across the waterway I was following. The black floating dots of a flock of wigeon stippled the water for a moment, then fractured it into a million slivers as they surged into the air and went racing away with that rapid dark intentness no other duck can match.
Avenhorn is only a 40-minute train ride from bustling, bright-eyed Amsterdam, yet out among these grassy marshes and ploughed fields and their bird-haunted waterways you could be walking through backwoods country a thousand miles from any city. The flat tablelands of North Holland were first drained some eight centuries ago, when banks were built to keep the North Sea out. From the 17th century on, as the country enjoyed a golden age of prosperity through its colonial possessions, land reclamation for agriculture went ahead in earnest.
An air of untameability remained, though. Great floods swept through from time to time, drowning thousands, ruining numberless homes and livelihoods. This was still wild country protected only by the will of the Lord and the sturdiness of the dykes or sea banks. The importance of those was reflected in the penalty for damaging dyke, wall or sluice - amputation of the right hand and permanent banishment from the offender's home village, a sentence of death in all but name.
Nowadays a network of well-waymarked footpaths follows the flood banks, and strangers are welcome on the dykes. There are cafés by the waterways and hot cakes for all. "Eetcafé Les Deux Ponts," said the notice on the gatepost by a fork in the waterway spanned by twin bridges. "Warme Chocolademelk met Wener Appeltaart." No need for a translator here, and the red-roofed eetcafé looked very seductive standing by the bridge over its own wavering reflection. But I hadn't yet put enough chilly miles under my belt to justify the halt.
Passing Oudendijk church I got a cheerful wave from two men reshingling the steep roof under its stumpy spire. Then it was out into the vast green acres of the Beemster polder, dotted with big dark sheep. A solitary man was digging up black earth with a spade, his tiny figure caught in a net of gleaming ditches as the mist thinned and the sun began to take a grip on the day. Crowds of geese honked mournfully as they drew immense wavering Vs across the white sky of late winter. Their presence, and an abrupt look to the skyline ahead, gave the sense of a huge body of water not far away.
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