Country diary: I inhaled a whiff of wolf urine – it was the true essence of wilderness
This place, which straddles two eastern European countries, has a reputation as the continent's last primeval forest – a glimpse of a world before it was smothered in ourselves and the homolith. To arrive at night is to tunnel through trees for mile after mile without end. And this, you realise, represents a fraction of the whole. Because beyond the border the Belorussian section of Białowieża is larger still. Overall, it extends to 149,000 hectares, but there is a further buffer forest of 131,000 hectares.
To imagine this whole: take all of the RSPB's reserves in Britain, place them contiguously, then lay them end to end with all the 46 Wildlife Trusts' reserves and cover it largely in trees. They would still be less in area than Białowieża.
You'd still only have an impression of it in a generic sense, of seeing it in the dark, so to speak. It is during the day that you can separate the trees from the wood, when the wealth of detail and experience is so great it's almost overwhelming; such as the black woodpecker drinking sap at the tree base and flying off with its forest‑piercing kreee-kreee call; the male bison locking horns, their breath thickened around them as musty clouds in the sub-zero morning air; the sight of a pine marten caught in a shaft as an arc of glistening fur against the forest shadow.
I couldn't capture Białowieża as just one image, but maybe I can render the magic of the place as a smell. While we were inside the national park's pristine core, our obligatory guide noticed a raised post, and pointed out that such sites are used by wolves for scent-marking. There are five packs in the Polish side. With leaves he mopped up the moisture and held it for us to experience. Wolf piss possesses the most powerful natural odour I think I've ever encountered, and I only wish I could include a scratch-and-sniff with this column to convey it.
Weirdly, however, noxious as it was, once the withdrawal instinct was done, an equally compelling reaction ensued: to sample it again. It was the stench of wolves, but it was the perfume of European wilderness, (largely) unmediated by our species.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
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