Herma Gerringa

My experiences as an outdoor coach for young adults

It remains a miracle: meeting at the nostalgic station of Overveen or at the Oasis in the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen. With a twentysomething I don’t know, after a few e-mails or a short phone call at the most. You shake hands and a few minutes later you leave the everyday world and step into the dune landscape together. It doesn’t require anything but the attention for the person walking next to you. The conversation flows naturally.

Yet sometimes there is only the silence, sitting on top of a dune, watching what is happening: a herd of grazing Scottish Highlanders, geese flying over in a V-shaped formation, a fallow deer suddenly close by. Nature that manifests itself in all possible metaphors.

Which path do you choose: the main one, an inconspicuous one, or do you make your own way through the bush? What do you encounter on that path? What obstacles hinder the way?

You can always make a link to what is going on with the person you are out with. Someone who makes a still life with symbols from natural materials, in a place of their own choosing, is completely in the moment. Looking at what has been created, without any judgment, can suddenly provide an insight or the courage to make a change.

And the walk continues, up and down the dunes, through wind and weather. Feeling that you are alive! And before you know it, you say goodbye to each other two hours later and each one steps back into their own lives.

Herma Gerringa, former RLO teacher from 1983 to 2006; March 2012