As I mentioned in some of my earlier posts, there are different smaller forests and fields outside of Reinfeld. We have fallow deer and roe deer in the forests outside of the town, and there are wild boars in the shrubbery near the pond but they are shy at day time and only come out at night. I really don’t want to meet wild boars when I am hiking, because they can be dangerous, especially after they did breed. When you spot a female wild boar with offspring, it can end badly, because they might try to aggressively protect the offspring if you are too close.

Ten years ago I got a lesson how aggressive wild boars can be, my uncle and me walked through a forest in Salem at night on the way to a fishing place, my uncle and me had to climb up a tree near the river because of wild boars, we still laugh about this today, although we had luck. I also saw wild boars near the camp ground a few times in the evening, they tried to ram the wooden door of our camp site. But as said, they are not always aggressive, they are shy at day time if they don’t have offspring, and they do usually only come out at night. So, the chance to meet them is still little.

Wild boars are hunted, mainly at night, because as mentioned, that’s the time when they don’t hide. Here in Reinfeld I do sometimes hear gunfire of the local hunters in the evening, and there are signs in the nature where they explain some things about the animals, and why they are hunted. Wild boars do destroy fields, that’s financial damage for the farmers. However, the good thing is that the hunting seems to be controlled by the government and laws, not everyone can be a hunter, they have a special licence, they are qualified and work together with the local authorities, and they are involved in animal protection. In other words, they don’t  hunt for the fun, they hunt to control the animal population, or they hunt if a boar runs riot in a town and so on.

Talking about the photo in this post, I shot the photo two days ago during a long hike. Again I went through different small forests and over fields, because that is the landscape here. The winter landscape made fields look like snow deserts, especially with the snow fog, that was pretty interesting. I talked so much about wild animals in this post because I saw different signs on my way, and I saw many high seats of hunters, and other outposts of them, including some that even had camouflage netting and looked like warzone sniper nests. I was hoping to see deer, I hoped this during all of my hikes here but I had no luck yet. I have read there should be a population of 100 deer in this area and thought I might have luck some day, but maybe they are very shy.

The hikes are interesting anyway, the farther away from the town, the more relaxing I feel. If you are somewhere in a “snow desert”, you feel a little bit of loneliness, but in a positive sense. I like to get out there, for some it might be boring to see fields over fields, but to me it’s something special, it’s so calming. My uncle said it’s insane to go hiking for up to four hours in winter, but I can easily forget that it’s cold when my steps carry me somewhere. But sometimes I get also depressive thoughts, because you can not even walk an hour without seeing another street, even if it’s a country road, but it shows that we simply took too much nature. I get that we have to live somewhere, that we have to produce things, and I am happy about protected areas, but they are still too small in my opinion.

Sometimes it seems as if every square meter is either owned by farmers, forestry or you find streets and the villages on the way at some point. I sometimes get those negative thoughts on my way and the question how it can be that money can make you own a forest, or why there is much more owned land than nature. I was for example almost upset when I saw a sign in front of a forest with the note that it’s forbidden to walk through the forest after 6 pm. I mean, what the… ? Stuff like that makes me become an anarchist, I would have entered the forest anyway if I would have been there at this time of the day, because I don’t accept that someone can own a piece of nature. So, at times I get my five minutes and negative thoughts when I am hiking, but that is simply because I think we are taking too much of the nature, or that too much of the nature is already distributed to private hands. But as said, then I get positive thoughts again, because there is partly still nature that you can enjoy, not as much as I wish there would be, but at least there is still nature.