With billions of people on the planet, there is no longer such a thing as a hidden gem. The earth’s only realms left untouched are the inhospitable deepness of the ocean or the exalted heights of mountain peaks. Any landscape that doesn’t tell of immediate death is saturated with humanity in one way or another.
Thus, Hallerbos is not a hidden gem, though it is not as well-trekked as other European flowering events either. Compared to the chaos that is the Keukenhof, Hallerbos is a sparse glen populated with only horseback riders, bike herds, and meandering walkers (by the hundreds). I found out about it from a small, aside-passage in Sara Maitland’s Gossip from the Forest, where Maitland detailed an old trainline that once cut through Hallerbos to Brussels and dazzled all of its passengers with a sudden burst of hyacinth blue. It made me think of something abandoned, where I could only reach it by following a rusted rail line out of town and take its curve into the unknown forest.
In reality, me and my friend took a commuter line from Brussels to Halle, were herded to a free seasonal shuttle specifically routed for Hallerbos, were driven to the forest’s entrance and handed a brochure by a kindly, French-English-Dutch-German speaking retiree in a purple vest.
We got our own brochures. He pointed us to a neatly marked path and a gift shop.
It’s for the best that humans have put a tourist stake in Hallerbos. Without conservation, the woods would likely have lost its flowers entirely, as is happening to many bluebell forests across Europe.
Regardless, Hallerbos is magical.
While many fairy tales tell of gates to the fae realm through cues of light chiming bells or distant, laugh-filled music, the real herald should be the scent of flowers. Not the light, breezy scent of perfume or a candle, mind you, but the dizzying scent of fields of pollen, which assault the nose instead of tickle it. The hyacinth, or bluebell, is the true chime of fae. The clang of horse hoofs secondary. The click of a shutter-frame third. And fourth, perhaps, a group of spandex-wearing bikers.
The hyacinths of Hallerbos hurt. They army the forest for miles, bringing pain to the eyes of their visitors through allergen and magnificence. The flowers are coy and refuse to be captured, for it takes a high-end camera and photoshop to keep them from bleeding out of frame. It leaves most people holding up their phones to others later, claiming that they were honestly gorgeous, only cameras can’t capture what it’s like in person. That others don’t understand. They weren’t there to see it.
It touches deep on the fae wild.
Come summer, the fields vanish without a trace. Never mind the cloying scent they once choked the forest with. Never mind all the sneezes and eye scratching. Or the millions of flowers swaying together, as woodpeckers tah-tah-tah- above the canopy unseen.
They are there and gone again.
Me and my friend came back, early, from the Hyacinth garden.
We ate in Halle, watched a First Holly Communion come spilling out of the church in pleats and gelled hairs with the antsy energy of children let loose, then we packed our bags and rode the tracks back to Germany.
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