07-05-2025
The Ultimate Nature Hike: A Walk Through a Primeval Forest
Białowieża National Park in Poland is home to bison, elk and pygmy owls.
Entering Poland's Białowieża National Park through an enormous hand-hewn wooden gate, I felt like I had passed through a fairy-tale portal. Inside, my guide and I faced a hardpacked dirt trail leading through Europe's last significant section of primeval forest, a Hobbit-land of thick mosses, gnarly trees straining to find sunlight and rare wild animals, including the world's largest herd of European bison.
A dense canopy of trees shielded me from the sun; intense sounds and smells pervaded the woods. When Polish and Lithuanian royalty sequestered the forest to use as a game reserve around 1400, Białowieża became a hunting ground for elites. Today, the still-relatively-pristine park is part of a vast forest protected as a Unesco World Heritage Site straddling the border between Belarus and Poland. Tour operators such as AB Poland Travel offer one-day outings from Warsaw, but I planned to stay longer in search of a respite.
