nary journeys through jungles, deserts, and mountain ranges. I met colorful parrots on Jobi near New Guinea, camels galloping through the Gobi Desert and sea lions playing on the California coast. I could hardly imagine, or even hope, that I would ever make any real journeys like that, and have any remarkable adventures at all. I have always been fascinated by nature. In the polders around Gouda, in the woods of the Huis ter Heide nature resort, or on the Scheveningen beach, I found not only everything that I thought beautiful – acorns, pine cones, fragrant flowers, and shells – but also a reassuring order, a sense of contentment. It made for a sharp contrast with my unhappy life at the institute for the blind, so far from home. My parents and my brother Arie let me feel, smell and hear everything there was to be found and enabled me to build on these experiences with books they turned into Braille with slate and stylus. My book about the Artis Zoo was one of them.
During my introduction to the natural world, I never felt it to be in any way strange. The tiny daisies in February, the sweet scent of pine trees in the warm sun, the wind rustling in the poplar