Dear Angelica Archangelica,

The area I grew up in is strongly characterized by the presence of big rivers. Even in later years I kept close to these veins. Throughout my life, I have always lived near the Rhine and the Waal, in the Dutch province of Gelderland — both in the countryside and in the cities of Arnhem and Nijmegen. All of this within a region of roughly 300 km² in the eastern part of the Netherlands.

The natural landscape in this area was shaped by glacial activity during the penultimate ice age (Saalien), approximately 200,000 to 130,000 years ago. As glaciers advanced, they pushed river sediments forward and to the sides, forming ridges and undulations. After the last ice age (Weichselien), around 120,000 to 10,000 years ago, the rivers sculpted the terrain further by depositing coarser, stony materials near the main currents, creating distinct riverbanks and elevated floodplains.

~Angelica, I know you love these kind of rough and stony places along rivers ~

Therefore, not surprisingly, in 1935, the first recorded Dutch find of you was registered at Ooij, a village just a few kilometers from Nijmegen. Another source suggests that you were used in Europe much earlier, already during the Middle Ages. From that time onward, land use rights began to be divided and fixed.

~ And that is why I write this for you.
I am fully aware of your effort to grow widely along the rivers.
And I, like others, deeply appreciate this. We know you expand your presence in order to make safe abortion accessible to everyone and we thank you for this. We cherish the qualities of your dried roots in helping to end unwanted pregnancies. We see you. And we want you to know that we feel truly sorry that we didn’t visit you more often. That you weren’t welcomed into our homes often enough.
We want you to know that this wasn’t our free choice. To harvest you freely, the land must be governed by common usage rights.
Please stay close to us.~

Dear Angelica Archangelica during Body Tide, Cas-co, Leuven (BE), 2023