The Loosdrechtse Plassen, a chain of lakes between Amsterdam and Utrecht, exist because of three centuries of peat digging: workers cut and dredged the bog for fuel from the 1500s into the 1700s, unloading the harvested peat onto narrow strips called legakkers to dry in the sun. What was left behind were ribbons of land barely wider than a house. Hundreds of people still live on them, reachable only by boat, while sailors and canoeists thread the open water between.