In a country where there are more bikes than people, pollution from automobile exhaust is not a problem. Where "a good cold winter" is greeted with smiles of anticipation for commuting by iceskate and people love to ride the fast efficient trains, there is little serious agitation for bigger broader highways. Holland may still be 45 percent below sea level, but one in ten Hollanders owns a boat.

It sounds like fun, you say. It is, but pleasure is a byproduct born of determination out of necessity. So aren't words like "ecology" and "conservation" naming the obvious? "We don't define it, we live it," a guide says, surprised by the question. Live it, adapt it and change it. Case in point, the symbol of Holland, the windmill.

Northwest of Amsterdam in Shermerhorn, where windmills were so plentiful in the 17th century they could be heard in the city 20 miles away, the remaining few have become homes or museums. Schoolchildren and tourists come to learn how the miller and his family once lived and how the creaking giants worked.

The cozy living quarters have been restored to 1635. The walls are painted dark green; the copper and brass brightly polished; the beds tucked like shelves into alcoves. There are costumes, housewares and pictures. After a slide presentation on history and hydraulics, the curator-miller shows and explains the Archimedieal Screw originally developed to pump the Nile. He keeps this one in working order, adding that windpower came in handy when the Germans seized the available fuel for their own factories. He says he was born in the windmill, the son and nehew of millers. His sons have grown and moved away, but he and his wife occupy one still. No, it doesn't function except as a part of the regional cultural movement. Holland has an abundance of natural gas, he adds.

Even here where the wind appears to be so constant riding a bike can be a struggle, there were doldrums. When the blowing stopped, the water rose alarmingly. With the coming of the steam engine in the 19th century, watermills (like the great sailing ships) were doomed. Schermeer held out the longest, but in 1928, the system finally changed over to electric pumps. Most of the mills were promptly dismantled ("A mistake," a visiting engineer mutters, "but it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.").

The largest concentration of windmills today is in Kinderdijk, near Rotterdam, where 19 showcase drainage mills turn along the Molenkade. However, nearly every village seems to have retained a nonfunctioning mill if only for use as a tourist information office and repository of local artifacts.

Schermerhorn's "Watermills from the Golden Age" stand on 17,000 acres of polderland, that is, land that was once a lake. Constant pumping-out is all that keeps it from reverting. Ditches cornered by eel traps serve as fences to hold livestock in the fields. Paths are made of crushed seashells. The reed-thatch and tile-roofed dwellings are mostly one-story, and like all Dutch buildings, rest on pilings that go as deep as the house is high. Windbreaks are rigorously chopped back so that prunings can be used for baskets and ditch reinforcements.

Millennia ago, primitive tribes decided to occupy the swampy land on the North Sea that was their fishing ground. First they built hills of debris barely keeping their huts above the high tide line. Then they tried stopping the annual inundations with sea walls using mud, seaweed and reeds. Over the centuries, by trial, error and incredible stamina, they moved on to dams, dikes, and drainage enforced by windpowered pumps.

Today you can bike or drive across the 20-mile dam that encloses the freshwater Ijsselmeer (once the Zuiderzee), stopping along the way to read tablets explaining the engineering marvel. Incidently, the great sluices are open at night so eels can swim through, dine on mosquitos and, in turn, become a favorite Durch food. Biking the flat expanse of Holland is easy, and most of the bikes seem to be the old-fashioned 3-speed variety. You can rent serviceable wheels within a few yards of almost any train station, and Amsterdam (550,000 resident bikes) has a "Yellow-Bike City Tours" as well as 70 canal tour barges. The response to gridlock has been typically to declare more zones car-free and add bike-lanes.

If the Dutch did not invent environmental management, neither vigilence nor maintenance ever cease. The canals of Amsterdam are cleaned every night; the water totally replaced every three days. Water level is monitored and pumping stations keep it steady. Amsterdam's normal high water mark (NAP) first set centuries ago has become the basis for measurements of altitude throughout much of western Europe.

Literally dozens of environmental science congresses are held in Holland every year without fanfare. Nor is there hype for Ecolonia (picture on left), the project town midway between Amsterdam and Den Haag in Alphen a/d Rijn. This urban development scheme consists of 101 dwellings designed by nine architects following policy lines of the Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan: energy conservation; integral life cycle management; and quality improvement. Guided tours are possible but only on request.

Perhaps the history of the Netherlands -- now one of the world's most densely populated countries -- leads to taking for granted what others have not quite assimilated: saving the environment has to become a way of life. Of course, you recycle. Naturally, you treat the hard-won land with respect. Waste is not only wrong it's stupid. "God made heaven and earth," the saying goes, "but men made Holland." The lines of eco-responsibility run deep.

Netherlands Board of Tourism
Toll Free 1-888-GOHOLLAND (464-6552);
E-Mail: info@goholland.com

European Center for Eco-Agro Tourism (ECEAT),
Postbus 10899 1001 EW, Amsterdam;
Tel: 011-31-20-6681030; Fax: 011-31-20-6650166

Ecolonia Informatiecentrum, Herfstlaan 19, 2408 NK, Alphen a/d Rijn;
Tel: 011-31-172-426513

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