SLOVAK PARADISE

Wooden ladders over a frozen river at the Slovak Paradise National Park.

 

I think we were the only people in the park, that day. Winter was still wrapped around every surface, the layers of snow packed down by trampling feet, but far underneath a steady dripping sound indicated the coming of spring...

As we ascended on wooden ladders and stairs the dripping became a slow trickle, then a rushing of moving waters, heard from beneath every waterfall...

At a certain point, after a particularly difficult climb up a waterfall and over an icy lip, through an opening in the stone, above a 200 foot drop, we realised there was no turning back... We were lost in a land of impossible beauty.

A WINTER WONDERLAND

...where magic and science are one and the same...

 

Sticks lined all along the edges of the rock walls, bare boned ribs of some wooden creature, neatly arranged by unseen hands...
- (pushed there by the flow of the river.)
 
Leaves and other treasures encased in glass, like curiosities of autumn...
- (revealed by the melting of the ice, they lay in small puddles.)
 
Glass waterfalls, that spill from nowhere, down into the icy river...
- (water frozen in middair, emerging from a small crevasse in the rock.)
 
Patterns on logs: symbols and characters, the hyroglyphics of an ancient society, etched into the top layers of rotting wood...
- (the work of small insects, that eat away at the tree under bark, aiding in its eventual decomposition.)
 
Up, up, up, we went
Walking on hard water, and soft, crumbling wood.
Then up the ladders, chilled fingers on cold steel, holding on so tightly,
My breath in my throat as I look down past my feet...
 
Up to discover:

The Most Fascinating Wonder of All...
We came across a cave, out of which spilled a waterfall. Looking in, I spied something glinting at the back of the cave: what looked like worms of ice, reaching up from below... They reminded me of childhood stories, an image came to mind from the Moomintroll Books, of rows and rows of 'Hattifatteners,' small ghost-like, wiggling white worms. I half expect these ice creatures to move.
- (formed as a rare, natural phenomenon, these kind of ice spikes, or stalagmites, are still being studied. Their formation requires a perfect combination of many variables: water quality, surface temperatures, timing and the expansion of water through small frozen pockets to create the spike.)

 

A steep drop - looking down a metal ladder at the icy valley below, hiking in Slovak Paradise Park in winter.
Small sticks stuck in the sides of the rock river bed - all lined up. Weird natural phenomenon.
A small orange leaf from Autumn, now frozen into the ice of the river.
A sprig of pine needles, frozen in the layers of the river.
Ollie hiking on the wooden ladders of Slovak Paradise National Park in winter.
A frozen waterfall - one that once rushed over grassy cliffs.
Metal ladders to hike over the frozen waterfalls in Slovak Paradise Park, in winter.
The river still runs underneath the ice layer - with small icicles edging the rill.
Frozen water draped over a tree trunk, wedged into the sides of a narrow canyon.
Wood that was carved by boring insects - an old tree trunk with natural pictographs.
A small pictograph made by insects on a dead tree trunk.
Wooden ladders lead through narrow canyons, cut by a frozen river.
Real life Hattifatteners from the Moomintroll world - Ice formations grow in a small cave like worms.
A frozen waterfall spills out of a small cave in the mountainside, Slovakia.
Small stalagmite like ice formations in a natural cave, Slovak Paradise Park.
A frozen waterfall in the Slovak Paradise Park.
A mushroom grows on a tree - decorated with red and orange rings.
Wooden ladders to hike over frozen rivers, Slovakian National Park.

DEMÄNOVSKÁ

Demänovská Caves of Liberty - beautiful stalagmites along the cave floor.

ON THE BEAUTY OF THE DEEP PLACES

~ as told by GIMLI, SON OF GLÓIN

"Strange are the ways of Men, Legolas! Here, they have one of the marvels of the Northern World, and what do they say of it? Caves, they say! Caves! Holes to fly to in time of war, to store fodder in! My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns of Helm's Deep are vast and beautiful?

... when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under echoing the domes, ah! then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! a silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes: they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains' heart..."

 

~ quotes taken from J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

THE  UNDERGROUND PALACES of DEMÄNOVSKA

 

Marble riverbed, Loamy passage,

Král’s Gallery, Pink Hall,

Deep Dome, Stone Vineyard,

formed of fissure and karst...

An underground river and an Emerald Lake,

Flowstone waterfalls,

Waterlilies and other lacustrine forms

(sponge, coral and grape)

Stalactites and cave pearls...

And that thick layer of white soft sinter –

called moonmilk, in the Great Dome...

 

All these palace halls and gardens,

made of water and stone, shaped only by the hands of time.

 

Stalactites overhanging an underground lake in Demänovská cave.
Spectacular cave pearls in the Demänovská caves of Slovakia.
Spiky red stalactites like knives on the cave ceiling.
An underground spring running through the karst caves of Slovakia.
White calcium limestone waterfall in an underground cave - with unicorn horn stalagmites.
The serene turquoise spring waters of Demänovská caves in Slovakia.
Stalactite like a unicorn's horn, standing over a limestone waterfall.
Red karst and blue water in an underground cavern of Slovakia.
Blue water and stalactites on the Demänovska cave ceiling.

BOJNICE

Bojnice Castle - a real life Disney castle, of pink stone and blue towers, in Slovakia.

 

Dawn,

at the castle,

reveals its pink light

on the very walls of the keep.

.

Sandstone turned to roses,

roses in the windows,

roses in amongst

the creeping ivy...

I spot two deer, a male and female, through the greenery...

they see us too, and then they are gone.

.

This spring will only last an hour,

an enchantment bound within a circle,

for, beyond the moat and the drifting swans,

it is still winter... the woods are bare, the leaves have fallen,

in one great red carpet that rustles underfoot.

.

Encircled by emeralds

love locked,

moat, gate, and drawbridge,

within these walls

the castle sits:

an emblem of romance,

a jewel set aside, its owner long gone.

 

 

The charming pink stone castle of Bojnice, Slovakia - complete with turrets in blue.
White swans in the green moat of Bojnice Castle.
Autumn in Slovakia - when all the forest turns red.
Bojnice Castle at sunrise - the moat is green and the stone is pink.
Pink and blue castle turrets - beautiful ivy crawling up the walls - the romantic castles of Slovakia.
A tiny stone castle on an island surrounded by a moat - with a small wooden bridge.
Gold heart shaped locks on a chain bridge.
Red leaves in a red forest - autumn in Slovakia.