False Mountain

By LJ Kessels:

When I think of the word mountain, I think of home. Which is ironic, as I come from the Netherlands, from Limburg in the south, the dangling leg bit, treated by the rest of the country as its forlorn relative, with a funny accent, customs, and catholicism. It is a place of poverty, corruption, melancholy, and exuberance. An exuberance generally described as bourgondisch, in reference to the enjoyment of life, wine and hearty food. The people in Limburg are an alienated people, both from one town to the next, and then together, against ‘The Hollanders’.

In the south of Limburg is the Vaalserberg, a hill just over 300 metres above sea level and the highest point in mainland Netherlands. Vaals sounds like False, or the Dutch word ‘vaal’ meaning less bright or washed out, like a shirt that was washed too many times. There are stories that the hill used to be higher, but that it sank due to mining activities underneath it. In actuality it was first mentioned in 1041, and comes from the latin in Vallis, meaning in the valley. Due to the run of history three countries (Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands) claim part of the Vaalserberg. 

Nevertheless, it was the highest ‘mountain’ in the Netherlands, until this source of pride was taken in 2010 with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles. The Caribbean island of Saba was incorporated into the Netherlands and with it Mount Scenery , nearly 900m above sea level and the new highest point on Dutch soil.

I only went to the Vaalserberg once, my roots are more towards the ‘armpit’ of the province, in the swampland of The Peel. I grew up in Nederweert-Eind,  a small village, close to the city of Weert. In Dutch, Weert is a piece of low land surrounded by water. During 1944 Nederweert-Eind was the front line of the war, and completely shot to bits. So much so that when my step-grandmother arrived in the village after the war, she described it as the place where the world literally had ended. 

I like that story as it describes what it felt like growing up there: life was flat and bleak, stuck in the cyclical nature that comes with life in the countryside. A life that echoed the seasons: work, eat, sleep, repeat. After Christmas comes Carnival, after Lent comes Easter. The summer ends with a fair. Repeat. For some it is reassuring, for others it gives them the feeling there is no way out. Of never making it to higher ground. 

The first question people ask around there is where are you one of? What family do you belong to? You don’t answer with your surname, as that is only how you are ‘written’, in reference to the time of Napoleon where people had to ‘pick’ a surname. Instead, you provide your family nickname. This can be a name referring back to the old family homestead, an infamous character in a family's history, or (as in my case), just a succession of patriarchs. Like an instant family tree. 

As a kid I told my teacher, I could not wait to be older, have my own place, and be able to make ends meet. I had more ambition than small town life, where everyone knew everyone’s business all of the time. I felt alienated in that place. My first escape attempt came when I decided to move to Amsterdam at 18 and study philosophy. For the daughter of a working class, illiterate single father, this was unheard of. All of a sudden I became a person. I was no longer the daughter of so-and-so, or the little sister of so-and-so. I was taken out of my context, where everyone knew your entire family history by simply knowing what family I belonged to. For everyone I met, I was the single point of reference, and became my own person. This became more clear to me the moment someone had asked me to spell my surname. A strange question when you grew up in a place where nearly every third person has the same surname. Then my second attempt to escape came in 2016, when I boarded a train with two bags and a bike, and moved to Berlin.

Remember my step-grandmother who arrived at the village of my childhood shortly after WWII? A war-torn place in the throws of trying to (re-)build. Another aspect to this story is that she was in her early thirties when she arrived at this place, around the same age I am now. She had met a widower with seven children, and decided to leave the comfort of her family home, to move to a small village, and become a mother to a brood of traumatised children. She would remain there, mainly accompanied by her mentally disabled step-daughter, until she got too old, placed into a care home, and died not long after.

Life goes on, up and down, like the outline of a mountain. Wanting to climb it, also means the risk of falling down. Something that in a flat country, where I might have stayed, rarely happens. As a reminder of my own ambition I have a tattoo of a mountain on my forearm. To give myself a push. For when I’m afraid. To remind me to listen to my own saboteur. To push myself further and not fall down the valley, or sink back into the muddy waters. 

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LJ Kessels is a writer based in Berlin, Germany. She has a MA in Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam and has worked for various (film) festivals, events and whatchamacallits across Europe. Her work has previously been published in Bull & Cross, OF ZOOS, and Stadtsprachen Magazin.