2005
Location
The place where you can find the art- and nature walk The Legend is situated in the state forestry behind the open-air museum Ellert&Brammert at Schoonoord (the Netherlands). The area has some special geological and historical elements (glacier hole, pingoruin, old walls wit oaks) and is very varied. The art- and nature walk is about 3.5 kilometres long. Small, bending paths alternate with wider avenues. In some places you can still see the low hills of the former swifting sands which are wooded now.
The icy past
If you walk round the glacier pit in the forests behind the open-air museum Ellert & Brammert you can hardly imagine how this beautiful glade has come into being. For an explanation we have to go back to the end of the ice age, about 200,000 years ago. Enormous glaciers with a thickness of sometimes hundreds of metres dominated the then landscape. When, after this icy period, the temperature rose, these masses of ice began to melt and retire to their origin, in the Arctic regions. In their wake they left behind the well-known erratic blocks or boulders, of which later the original population of Drenthe took advantage. Besides, the water ground marks in the sandy and boggy subsoil.
One of the theories about the origin of the glacier pit is that the enormous streams of water, rushing down from above, made deep pits in the soil and swept away, as it were, the topsoil. The wild water streamed on, for a short time forming rivers and lakes and, after drying up, left behind these characteristic, bowl-shaped depressions.
Another theory is that the pit has nothing to do with glaciers, but that the depression in the landscape was caused by a crashing meteorite. Anyhow, in Schoonoord it is a splendid and attractive open space. A magic eye peering quietly at the heavens.
The boggy place in the neighbourhood of the glacier pit also dates from the distant past. It is usually regarded as a normal pool. However, that is not true. This place surrounded by high trees is a genuine pingo. Pingo ruins are, without doubt, remains from the ice age. Dozens of them are to be found in the North of the Netherlands. Also in Drenthe the local population could warm itself for centuries on end by the fire from peat that was dug out of these pools.
Pingos can arise in different ways. When the soil was almost permanently frozen, only in summer an about one-metre-thick top layer thawed out and smaller and larger lakes came into being. The water, however, could not sink in the subsoil, as a result of permafrost. As the temperature of the water was relatively high, the permafrost thawed out more deeply at these places, sometimes up to several metres in the subsoil. In a cyclus of many years the pools froze again, silted up, froze etc. During this process there was an enormous pressure on the surrounding earth (ice has a larger capacity than water) and lobes of ice covered with earth and plants came into being. When the climate warms up and the ice melts, the covering soil slides down and forms a kind of ring wall round the core.
Eventually all the ice has melted. What remains is a bowl-shaped pond. A so-called pingo-ruin, as is to be seen close to he other witness of the ice age, the glacier pit. Two natural phenomena which are characteristic of the landscape of Drenthe. That, much later, also canals were dug and that the drifting sands were covered with trees, as a result of which the present landscape of Drenthe is so fascinating and varied, are different stories. It is to be hoped that you can read those stories in the future catalogues of Natuurkunst Drenthe, when the intention to develop a permanent site for nature/art at this location will be realized. Every year a new surprising walking route. Every year new surprising works of art by international artists.