Geschreven door On Aug. 20 in 2016 we walked together through the dune area near Paal 3 where we climbed over the dunes before continuing our photowalk across the North Sea beach towards West Terschelling. A strong wind and clear weather made for beautiful pictures. Our cameras did not stand still.
With my compact video camera I could capture the entire walk and for the sound I had found my Zoom H1 audio recorder back in our attic a few days before. Equipped with a fluffy windshield I took the recorder with me under the strap of my backpack, on the way I had to correct it every now and then so as not to lose it.
We were walking around the dunes near the old shooting range when I noticed that I had lost the recorder and its windshield. Obviously I didn’t want to leave it on the beach and while the rest of the group kept waiting for me I walked quite a distance back looking for the little recorder. After the sun set, it was getting dark soon and I was afraid I would never find it again due to the strong wind and the sand blowing around. I followed our footprints in the sand which also disappeared faster and faster.
Suddenly I saw something sticking out above the sand. The windshield was still firmly on top of the recorder and was just visible above a lump of sand; the recorder itself had by now been buried. I shouldn’t have come much later and was very happy when I found it again. Then I walked quickly back to the group, but the distance I had walked back turned out to be quite far, so I had to walk back at a fast pace so as not to keep them waiting too long.
What followed was hilarity. ‘Look, he found his guinea pig again!’….and I had to hear that for years on the other walks. ‘Did he stay home sick?’ ‘Did you put him in the bag?’ ‘He changed color!’ (I had a black one by now) and so on.
When I got home the next day, I played the recording to listen to see if it had succeeded. Everything from that day had been recorded. But the most valuable thing was in an older file on the small memory card. The recorder had been in a box in our attic for several years and just before that I had taken it on a walk on Schokland with my daughter Romy and our Jack Russel Stitch. It was a recording of our conversations during that walk. A precious memory was spared a burial on the beach of Terschelling. Half an hour later and I could never have found the recorder. Thank goodness for the guinea pig whose furry head was just sticking out of the sand.
”It has become a memorable photowalk with great memories. I enjoyed it immensely and am grateful that to this day we still get to do this with our family, friends and our faithful four-legged friend Stitch who was able to celebrate his fifteenth birthday on 10-10-2023. I just found the audio recordings again on one of my hard disks. The audio recordings are not only of a very young daughter Romy, but also of our little faithful quadruped Stitch”.
Thanks to everyone for the wishes and see you on the Wadden!