Light plays through the trees of the Drents-Friese Wold, near the village of Appelscha. The village was first mentioned as Apples in Medieval archives in 1247, the ending 'scha' means forest. For centuries, the settlement consisted of only a few farms, but from 1827 the village expanded enormously with the arrival of thousands of Frisian workers, who settled here for the sake peat-cutting. The social conditions among the labourers were very bad, with the result that in 1888, when peat yielded much less than coal, a large strike broke out among the peat-workers. This was the beginning of organized strikes in the Netherlands. Since 1933, the Pentecostal Field Days, an annual Anarchist festival, take place in Appelscha, From 1954 until about 1980 I used to camp here every summer with my family.