Rick van der Klooster — Between the Mountain and the River

Throughout his childhood, Rick van der klooster spent the school holidays in the mountains with his mother. It was only when she suddenly became terminally ill in 2013 that Rick realized how special the landscape had become for he is mother and him. The Alps became a place where his mother could continue to live in her thoughts. The fear of going back and really losing her kept Rick from setting foot near his mother’s mountains for a long while. For years he visited his mother’s guesthouse in the Alps in his dreams. She often sat on a porch with solid wooden beams and planters filled with red flowers. They talked about what it’s like to be dead, that the world moves on and how to deal with that. In July 2018, five years after his mother’s death, Rick returned to the mountains of his youth. Fearful, but determined, he entered the high forest on the border mountain and heard the river on the other side of the mountain calling him.