Mavrovo National Park

Listen for a moment. Up here in Galičnik, the loudest sound is often the wind moving across open grass. Sometimes a sheep bell rings somewhere below the village, then stops. The air is thin and cool, even in summer, and it smells of dry herbs and stone warmed by the sun. You are standing high on the slopes of Bistra mountain, inside the oldest and largest protected landscape in North Macedonia.

Mavrovo National Park was established in 1949. That makes it one of the first national parks in the country. It covers a wide sweep of the western highlands, close to the border with Albania. Within its limits are high peaks, deep river gorges, beech and pine forests, an artificial lake, old monasteries and a scattering of mountain villages. Galičnik is one of those villages, and it is a very good place to understand the park as a whole.

Look around at the houses. They climb the slope in tight rows, built from local stone, many with white walls and dark timber details. This is the architecture of the Mijaks, a regional community of the western Macedonian mountains. The Mijaks were known as builders, woodcarvers and shepherds. Their villages were designed for steep ground and hard winters. The houses sit close together, and the narrow lanes between them follow the shape of the hill.

Here is something many visitors do not expect. For much of its history, Galičnik was a village where the men were often absent. Mountain land could not feed every family, so many men left to work far away as builders and craftsmen. In the local language this seasonal migrant work is called pečalba. The men sent money home and returned when they could. The village life you see today was shaped by those long absences and those long-awaited returns.

Those returns lead to the most famous custom of this place — the Galičnik Wedding. Traditionally, many weddings took place at one time of year, in summer, around the feast of Saint Peter, when the working men came home. Today the custom continues as an annual festival in July. A couple marries in the full traditional ceremony, with costumes, drums, the zurla, which is a loud wooden pipe, and circle dances in the open air. If you visit in July, the quiet lanes around you will fill with people.

For most of the year, though, Galičnik is calm. Over the twentieth century, many families moved down to towns and cities, and the permanent population fell sharply. Many houses are now summer homes. Their owners return in the warm months, open the shutters and air out the rooms. In winter the village can be almost empty under deep snow. That rhythm of emptiness and return is still part of the place.

Now turn your attention to the land beyond the rooftops. The open pastures on these slopes have been grazed by sheep for centuries. Galičnik is known in North Macedonia for its sheep's milk cheese, a firm, yellow cheese called kashkaval, and for a soft white cheese as well. If you see a local producer selling cheese in summer, it is worth tasting. The flavour comes from the mountain grasses and herbs under your feet.

The park itself is much larger than this hillside. To the north and west rise the Šar Mountains and the Korab range. Mount Korab, on the border with Albania, is the highest peak in North Macedonia, at 2,764 metres. Its summit is a serious hike and is usually climbed in summer with a guide. From many viewpoints in the park, you can see its long ridge, often with snow on it well into spring.

Between the mountains runs the Radika river. It cuts a deep, green gorge through the park, and the main road follows it for much of the way. Along this gorge, not far from here, stands the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, known as Bigorski. Its church holds a carved wooden iconostasis, which is the screen of icons that separates the altar from the rest of the church. It was made in the nineteenth century by Mijak woodcarvers — perhaps relatives, in spirit, of the builders who made this village.

To the east lies Lake Mavrovo. It is not a natural lake. It is a reservoir, created in the twentieth century when a dam was built to produce hydroelectric power. The water flooded part of the old village of Mavrovo. The Church of Saint Nicholas was left standing in the reservoir. When the water level is low, the church rises out of the lake, half-ruined, with its walls and roofline visible. When the water is high, only part of it shows. It is one of the strangest sights in the country.

The forests here are home to animals that are now rare in Europe. Brown bears and wolves live in the park. So does the Balkan lynx, a wild cat that is critically endangered, with only a small number left in the wild. Mavrovo is one of its most important refuges, and conservation groups study it here. You are very unlikely to see one. They are shy and mostly active at night. But it is good to know they are out there, somewhere in the beech woods below.

In winter, the park changes character. Near the lake there is a ski area, and families come up from Skopje and other cities for the snow. In summer, people come for hiking, cycling, swimming in the lake and simply cooler air. Galičnik sits slightly apart from all of that. The road up here is narrow and winding, and the reward is space, silence and a long view.

Before you leave, take one more look. Notice how the stone of the houses matches the colour of the rock on the slopes around them. Notice the wide pasture, the ridges stacked one behind another, the light moving across them as clouds pass. Listen again for the bell, or the wind. As you walk back down the lane, you are following the same path that generations of returning workers walked when they finally came home.