Pine trees in silhouette against a orange and violet sunset over open heath.

the heath after five

photographs and evening walks, east side of the zwartven

forty hectares of heather, four ponds that never quite freeze, and a drift of open sand the pines have not taken back yet. all of it is at its best in the last hour of light, which in december is at half past three.

A sandy path winding through flowering purple heather towards young birches.
Close-up of a low shrub with green moss growing along its stems.

the light goes
early here

Moss in close-up, its spore stalks standing up like tiny wires.

from the end of october the last walk leaves at four. we hand out one lamp between two people, because a heath with twelve torches on it is a car park with gorse. eyes take about twenty minutes to give up on the lamp and start working properly, and that twenty minutes is most of the point.

An adult and a child walking hand in hand across a field in heavy fog.
Ground covered in moss and fallen leaves.
Moss growing thickly up the side of a tree trunk.

four ponds that
never freeze right

A still pond in mist, with pines standing on the far bank and reflecting in the water.

the water is brown from the peat under it and holds the day’s heat longer than the ground around it. on a cold, still evening you can stand and watch the mist decide where the edge of the pond is.

Lily pads floating on almost black water.
A narrow stretch of water between trees and low bushes.
Heather and grasses stiff with white frost beside a treeline.
A ridge of grass in silhouette under a low band of gold cloud.
Bare trunks standing in rust-brown bracken on the floor of an autumn wood.

what lives
here is
mostly small

the black water is not dirty. it is stained by the peat below it, which is about the colour of strong tea and, in two of the four ponds, six metres deep.

Bare trees in silhouette against low sun burning through ground mist.

for about three weeks in late august the heather turns the whole east side purple, and everybody comes. the rest of the year the colour is down in the mosses and the lichens, and you have to kneel for it.

A person standing in silhouette among tall plants with the sun low behind them.
A single fern frond lit gold against a dark background.
Dry bracken lying flat on the ground in low light.
Straight pine trunks standing in rust-coloured undergrowth.
Reeds in silhouette against a low orange sun.

prints

a2 on cotton rag, printed twenty at a time and signed on the back. € 65, or € 110 for two. the walks are free; the prints pay for the lamps and the batteries, which is the whole business plan.

what a print costs

before you come

light
one lamp between two, handed out at the gate and handed back at the gate. no phone screens on the path — it takes one person twenty minutes to undo everybody else’s night vision.
dogs
on the sand track only, and on a lead the whole way. there are ground-nesting birds from march to july and they lose either way: the dog does not have to catch anything to empty a nest.
adders
yes, there are adders, and yes, in fifteen years nobody has been bitten. they are on the warm sand at the end of the afternoon. stay on the path and you will most likely never see one, which is a pity.
rain
we walk. the only thing that cancels an evening is lightning or a storm warning, and then we send one message to the number you left, about two hours before.
getting there
the gate is a twenty-minute walk from the bus stop, along a road without a pavement. the first four hundred metres of the sand track are firm enough for a wheelchair; after the second bench it is loose sand and it is not.
what we keep
a first name and one phone number, on paper, in a tin. it is thrown away the week after the walk. there is no newsletter and nothing is counted on this page.

the gate, thursdays and sundays

zwartven is a fictional example.

photographs are stock images and do not show this heath.