A summer walk in Clingendael Woods

The woods surrounding Clingendael, which houses the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, are one of my favourite places to walk in the Netherlands. I always wonder what it would be like to work there, and that curiosity and longing perhaps also colour my taste for this place.

Walking in the woods is an experience I have mostly had in the Netherlands, except possibly for Allerton Park in the US. The woods are a combination of open, safe space and a mysterious world full of secrets. Having only ever encountered them in books as a child, they are still the spaces that open out into magical, unfathomable or scary other-worlds for me. And this accounts for my fascination with undergrowth. Take a look at the next three photos.

You could walk by this and never see it.

Or you could stop and wonder what lies within. 

Or, you could use your zoom lens and begin to find out. 

If you belonged to the fantastic book-worlds of childhood, you might shrink and enter the undergrowth and conduct your own exploration, but as an urban-raised, creepy-crawly hating, slightly stiff adult, you just wish you had a stronger zoom setting and better photographic skills.

Here's another clearing with a secret world tucked away. 

Within the woods, there are a few clear paths. But unless you walk them, you cannot be sure where they lead.

And there are few straight lines. There is no enforced symmetry. Everything happens together, like a clangy, noisy untrained orchestra accompanying a barely-in-tune chorus, and miraculously, it works. You look at the lines and think, I would never have put those together, and off in a corner without balance... but I should have!

And in Clingendael, there are streams, bridges, pools, birds... and bird droppings! We almost sat on the banks of the pool for photos, but luckily spotted the droppings first. Oh well, every creature has a right to a lavatory! 

The loo queue 

I love these photos of reflections in the water, and have them also from a previous visit, elsewhere on this blog. More dramatic photos then, actually.

My first visit was in the late spring, late in the evening, and the woods were still not quite over winter. In the summer, Clingendael seems touched by magic, transformed, and if you go as we did, late in the afternoon, it is possible to believe that it is the threshold of other worlds. I look forward to a future visit with my niece when we can imagine the stories that take place in these other worlds.