Welcome to the fairytale forest by Lex Schulte

About "Welcome to the fairytale forest"

by Lex Schulte

About the artwork

A walk in the Reichswald in between Goch and Kleve. A beautiful stretch of forest with easily passable paths. A nice place, especially on an autumn morning when the sun tries to dispel the little fog. A play of light and shadow emerges between the trees, emphasised by a few sun harps or Jacob's ladders. A fairytale forest where you can enjoy the peace and quiet and take a break from all the hustle and bustle of the working week.
The Reichswald or Reich Forest is a rolling forest area between Kranenburg, Kleve, Goch and Bedburg-Hau in North Rhine-Westphalia along the Dutch border with the 95-metre-high Rupenberg as its highest peak.
It has a total area of about 5100 ha, making it the largest coherent nature reserve in the Lower Rhine region. It consists almost entirely of forest and is home to several species of mammals, including red deer, roe deer, wild boar and badgers. The forest is intersected with dead straight, parallel paths, forming a grid structure. The Reichswald is the German part of what used to be the Ketel Forest (Ketilawald).
Within the Ketelwald area are nature reserves of the Forestry Commission, Natuurmonumenten, Forstamt Kleve and numerous other owners.
The Reichswald consists mainly of deciduous trees with predominantly beech a number of smaller plots with pedunculate oaks and a few spots with conifers. Special fauna of the area include the bird species golden oriole, stonechat and black woodpecker and the beetle species flying deer.