I Walked in Spring, But Autumn Walked with Me

I Walked in Spring, But Autumn Walked with Me

✍️Author’s note

This essay began as a simple reflection on a spring walk through the woods and dunes of Soestduinen, the landscape of my childhood. But as often happens with memory, the walk opened more doors than expected. What began in spring gradually acquired the inward light of autumn.

At my age, returning to meaningful places is never only an act of remembrance. It also carries an element of farewell: not a dramatic or final goodbye, but a quiet recognition that places continue without us. We revisit them to acknowledge what they gave us, to understand what has changed, and perhaps to leave them once more in peace.

—WJJH

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

— Henri Matisse

The transition from winter to spring is one of nature’s great reassurances. It restores a sense of order, almost of promise. The woods of Soestduinen were green again, the birds were calling, the air had softened, and the dunes, shaped by sand, wind and time, still lay beside the pine forest as they had done in my childhood.

Yet the brightness of spring did not remove the inward light of autumn. At my age, every return carries a mirror. One does not simply revisit a place; one is quietly examined by it.

This was the area where I grew up: a quiet lane in Soestduinen, surrounded by nature, guided by loving parents, and guarded, in my imagination at least, by Benno, our Newfoundland dog. Our house stood at the edge of the pine forest, with the dunes close by. It was a landscape of trees, sand, wind, and long views — a childhood kingdom large enough to seem endless.

When my parents married, my grandfather bought the house for them as a wedding present, in the traditional manner. I was born there in 1943, which my father used to call, with a twinkle in his eye, “a good year for wine.” The twinkle would disappear when he recalled that the following year he had to go into hiding, and the house was confiscated by the Nazis, who had found a better use for it.

After the war, the house returned to us, though not entirely unchanged. Soon after their return, my parents were invited for tea by neighbours and were served from their own china. They drank from it, as courtesy required, but the experience burdened the relationship for years. Not everyone experienced the war in the same way.

And yet, for me as a child, the house was simply home. I grew up there without a care in the world. I did not go to kindergarten; the essential part of my early upbringing was to enjoy life, to play, to wander, to look. I remember long Sunday walks with my parents through the Soester dunes and the Pijnenburg estate near Lage Vuursche, and lunches in nature at the Spiehuis. Perhaps those walks taught me, without anyone saying so, to see nature not as scenery but as inheritance.

My younger brother shared this bond with nature. For him, nature did not wear a mask, as people sometimes do. It was poetry: surprising, beautiful, and honest. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was one of the many books he loved, and he was especially fond of the line: “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” It expressed something he understood instinctively — that beauty is not only above us in the heavens, but also around us daily, waiting to be noticed.

The sunrise, with dew rising over the fields, had special meaning for him. It was a symbol of hope and renewal, a daily reminder of life’s beauty and of the promise contained in each new day. I agree with him. Nature is more honest than we are and can still teach us a great deal, provided we care to listen. As Voltaire observed: “Men argue. Nature acts.”

Walking there again, I was also reminded of my father’s belief that we have an obligation to give something back: to society, to the earth, and to those who come after us. The poetry of nature is not only something to enjoy; it is also something to protect. We should leave this place we call Earth in a better condition than we found it.

Whether we are succeeding is another matter. I am not optimistic. In many ways, we still try to solve the problems of today with the same fragmented thinking that helped create them. The economy must grow, consumption must continue, efficiency must improve, and inconvenience must be avoided. Yet we hardly think about life as a whole.

A landscape does not live in fragments. A tree is not separate from the soil, the water, the fungi, the birds, the insects, the wind, and the seasons. A society is not separate either. It is made of relationships: between generations, between freedom and responsibility, between human need and natural limits, between memory and obligation. Perhaps this is what a walk teaches better than an argument. The earth is not an abstraction. It is the ground under our feet.

There is no avoiding the fact that the character of the seasons has changed. The winter snow I knew as a child rarely arrives now. Daffodils and tulips bloom and fade earlier. Spring still returns, but it returns differently. The air still carries its scent as well as its temperature; the birds still call; the pigeons and rabbits still make their appearances. But the old calendar has shifted.

Perhaps that is why memory stirred so strongly. With the days lengthening and the brown colour of winter giving way to green, curiosity rose as well. Or perhaps memory itself was looking for a way to let the past settle, so that the future could again take shape for another year.

The walk through the woods of Soestduinen was solitary and unhurried, just as I like it. I followed different turnings, climbed small hills, passed between the pine woods and the dunes. My bones told me that it was already a fairly long walk, and prudence advised me not to enter the dunes themselves. Loose sand is no friend to older legs. But the temptation to climb the hilltops for the view, the air, and the distance was too strong.

It was a rewarding walk, not because it was easy, but because it opened more than the landscape. Beauty, as so often, charged its price. Somewhere along the way, the mind began to wander too. Events I had not thought about for many years suddenly rose to the surface, as if the path had been waiting for me to return.

This was the ground on which part of my life was built. Here I had played as a child, with Newfoundland dogs as my guardians. Here my parents made their after-dinner walks. Here my strict but kind grandfather came with his cane to visit us for tea, teaching me things in his own way. Standing at the edge of the dunes, I could not avoid the memories. Nor could I avoid the present: the trees had matured, the landscape had changed, and nature had continued its work without asking permission.

Looking at the trees and the leaves, I thought: life is good.

The lane where I grew up has changed. What was once a quiet street of eight houses has become a row of seventeen comfortable homes, standing closer together and making fuller use of the available space. The old swimming pool in nature, once said to be one of the largest in Europe, has been replaced by a golf course and the DoubleTree by Hilton Royal Parc Hotel. The railway station I knew as a boy closed years ago. It is called progress, and perhaps it has given the old neighbourhood a new purpose. Still, something has been lost.

The old house itself has been enlarged. A separate building has been added, and the property has been divided into two lots. The tennis court where my parents and their friends once played has disappeared. The place is still recognizable, but not unchanged — rather like ourselves.

Walking around, I remembered the squirrels that used to wake me at dawn. The graves of the dogs we buried there are now covered by pine needles and spongy grass. There is little to mark them, except memory. The oak trees we planted have become their silent protectors. They have matured, as I have, growing higher, wider, and stronger. They will survive all of us. There is comfort in that thought, and also humility. Our importance is smaller than we like to imagine.

This is what life and history have in common: both require time to mature, and both continue after we have left the scene. When the chronicles of this period are written, and we have returned to dust, today’s urgency will be hidden under fallen leaves and fallen trees.

And yet the place remains special. New life was everywhere. The landscape was shaking off winter’s grip and preparing itself for summer. Spring asks us to consider renewal. Autumn asks us to look in the mirror. On this walk, both were present.

After lunch, I set off on my return with the feeling that I should come back again in autumn, when the light is less bright and the leaves have changed colour. The visit had been valuable. It placed certain questions in perspective, but it also raised others. Some thoughts need softer light before they can be understood.

A few old friends came to mind — school friends once noted in my address book, others lost track of long ago, and some who never truly belonged to the inner circle. It was a different time. Self-reliance was considered a virtue, emotions were kept more private, and there was, perhaps, more dignity in restraint. We grew up with a certain realism. Not everything had to be explained, displayed, or shared.

The address book thins with age. Many names were never attached to deep friendship. Some relationships belong to chapters, not to a whole life. With time one becomes more selective, perhaps also more honest. The same may be said of my relationship with the country in which I was born. My horizon was never limited to it; it was always larger. I have made my mistakes, neglected some maintenance along the way, and learned that life, like the seasons, seeks a delicate balance. Knowing myself, that is possible.

Perhaps this is what memory does when we walk through its corridors. It opens doors long closed without asking permission. Old scenes return, not to imprison us in the past, but to remind us of the ground from which we came. The landscape becomes a mirror: the woods, the sand, the hilltops, the effort, the memories. The body walks in the present, but the mind quietly takes side paths of its own.

There were glimpses: a girl from the same lane, childhood garden parties, the sudden pride and embarrassment of youth, a car accident at nineteen caused by wet leaves and too much confidence, my mother in a hospital that no longer exists, waking after an operation to find roses I had sent from Zurich before flying home. There were also friendships that proved less loyal than they appeared, and lines that had to be drawn.

Such memories arrived without order, as memories often do. They did not demand judgment. They simply asked to be acknowledged.

Perhaps every return at my age contains an element of farewell. Not a final farewell, and not a sad one, but the quiet recognition that places continue without us. We revisit them not to reclaim them, but to thank them, to recognize what they gave us, and to leave them once more in peace.

We are temporary visitors on an earth that has no single centre. We all look at the same sun from different horizons. The landscape quietly reminds us that nothing lives alone, and that what we call our own was never ours entirely. We belonged to it for a while. That may be enough.

There were flowers, after all, for those who wanted to see them: in the trees, in the roses that survived winter, in the memories that returned without asking permission. Spring had done its work. Autumn had done its own. And memory, for now, had been refreshed.

September, 2026

📌Blog Excerpt

The transition from winter to spring is one of nature’s great reassurances. The woods of Soestduinen were green again, the birds were calling, and the dunes still lay beside the pine forest as they had done in my childhood. Yet the brightness of spring did not remove the inward light of autumn. At my age, every return carries a mirror. One does not simply revisit a place; one is quietly examined by it.