Try to see something beautiful every day

There is more beauty around us than many of us realise.

These are my last days on my favorite island, where I have spent a long and beautiful summer. 

Those who had already subscribed to this newsletter in the early summer may remember what I wrote about the free-roaming Shetland ponies in the dunes or my stories about the island's local history. I celebrated my birthday here, and I made a video of one of my early morning swims in the North Sea. 

Besides those 48 Island Stories, you could also read about nature, climate change, or hurricane Ida this summer. In several videos, I spoke about the global water challenges, building resilience, and biodiversity loss.

If you look for something to read this Sunday, you can click on these links, or go to the archive to read or re-read one of the 73 newsletters that I posted since I arrived in mid-June, or one of the many that I wrote before that.

I made my last walk in the dunes just before the autumn storms and rains started, where I was happy to see the highland cattle again, which I had not seen for some time. As I wrote in my last newsletter, I will probably share more pictures and less text for the next ten or twelve days.

I took the following pictures in the past three days. As most of you know, I photograph a lot, and I always look for the beauty that is all around us but that many ignore. Photographers probably see the world around them differently, trying to capture what others ignore. Living on this island was a photographer’s delight since there are beautiful scenes everywhere.

Highland Cattle in the dunes (all photos taken by Alexander Verbeek)

Sunset at the beach.

Chestnuts are everywhere in the village.

A cornflower, also known as a ‘bachelor’s button’, is a species that is now endangered in its natural habitat by the over-use of herbicides.

This is the Wilhelmina Park in Utrecht, I used to cycle through it on my way to university in the 1980s.

I was one evening in The Hague, where I have lived several times in different periods of my life.

A last one of The Hague, where I have seen the skyline change over the past decades.

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