Curonian Spit National Park

Listen first. On one side, the Baltic Sea rolls onto open beach with a steady, heavy roar. On the other, the Curonian Lagoon is often almost silent, with reeds and small slapping waves. Between them lies a ribbon of sand and pine forest, sometimes so narrow you could walk from shore to shore in a few minutes. Underfoot, the sand is fine and pale. It squeaks a little when it is dry. This is the Curonian Spit, and few places on Earth feel quite like it.

The spit runs for close to one hundred kilometres along the coast. The northern half belongs to Lithuania, and the southern half belongs to the Kaliningrad region of Russia. The Lithuanian part became a national park in 1991, soon after the country regained independence. In 2000, UNESCO added the whole spit to its World Heritage List as a cultural landscape. That label matters. UNESCO recognised more than nature here. It also recognised how people learned to live with sand, wind and water, and sometimes how they lost to them.

Scientists describe the spit as young land. It formed after the last Ice Age, when sea currents and wind slowly built a long bar of sand across the mouth of a bay. The water trapped behind that bar became the lagoon. Local folklore has a different story. Legend has it that a kind giantess called Neringa carried sand in her apron to protect the fishermen of the coast from storms. That is why the Lithuanian municipality here carries her name today.

Now look at the dunes, because they are the heart of this place. Some of them are among the tallest drifting sand dunes in Europe. They are not fixed hills. Wind pushes them, grain by grain, and over decades whole ridges can move. Today much of the sand is held in place by grasses and forest. But for long stretches of history, the dunes walked freely across the spit. Much of what you see around you is the result of a long fight to stop them.

Here is a fact that surprises many visitors. The forests on the spit were heavily cut over the centuries for timber, firewood and grazing. Without tree roots, the sand was free to move. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, drifting dunes buried a number of fishing villages. Families had to abandon their homes and rebuild further along the shore. Somewhere beneath the sand, those old settlements still lie. The cosy pine forest you walk through today is largely the work of people who replanted it on purpose.

That replanting was slow and patient labour. Workers built low fences of brushwood to trap blowing sand. Then they planted grasses, then hardy shrubs, then pines and birches. Over generations, a protective dune ridge rose along the seashore, and forest crept back over the inland slopes. If you walk the trails, notice how young and even many of the pine stands look. Some of these forests were planted in rows, and you can sometimes still see that order in the trees.

Not every dune was tamed. South of the village of Nida, the Parnidis Dune rises in bare, golden slopes. A wooden staircase and paths lead up to its top, where a large stone sundial stands. From there, on a clear day, you can see the sea, the lagoon, and the long line of the spit running south toward the Russian border. Further along lie the areas often called the Dead Dunes, or Grey Dunes. They are fragile, so please stay on the marked paths. Footsteps loosen the sand and help the wind carry it away.

The villages of the spit grew up on the quieter lagoon side, away from the open sea. Their names are worth learning: Smiltynė, Juodkrantė, Pervalka, Preila and Nida. Look at the old fishermen's houses. Many are painted in deep reds, browns and blues, with white window frames and reed or tiled roofs. Some carry carved wooden decorations on the gables, often shaped like horse heads or birds. These small details belonged to a fishing culture that shaped life here for centuries.

Keep an eye on the rooftops and poles for something unusual — colourful wooden weathervanes. They are carved boards cut into shapes of houses, churches, horses and trees. In the nineteenth century, local fishing boats flew similar boards on their masts. Each design showed which village a boat came from, so officials could see who was fishing where. Today they have become a symbol of the spit. You will find them on houses, in gardens and in souvenir shops.

In Juodkrantė, the forest holds another surprise. On a wooded slope known as the Hill of Witches, dozens of carved oak sculptures stand among the trees. There are devils, witches, kings and figures from Lithuanian folk tales. Folk artists began carving them in the late twentieth century, and new pieces have joined over the years. Near the same village, a large colony of grey herons and great cormorants nests in the pines. Many of the trees there look grey and bare. That is the effect of the birds themselves, living in such numbers.

The spit also drew writers and artists. In Nida, on a hill above the lagoon, stands the summer house of the German novelist Thomas Mann. He built it around 1930 and spent several summers here with his family in the early 1930s. Mann loved the view so much that he called it a view toward Italy. The house, with its blue shutters and steep reed roof, now works as a museum and cultural centre. Artists also came for the light, which can turn soft and silver over the lagoon in the evening.

This narrow strip is also a corridor for wildlife. Every spring and autumn, huge numbers of migrating birds follow the coastline, and the spit acts like a natural highway in the sky. In the forests, you might meet roe deer, wild boar, or even an elk crossing a road at dusk. Drive slowly and watch the edges of the trees. On the beach, the sea sometimes washes up small pieces of amber, the fossil resin that people around the Baltic have collected for thousands of years.

Before you leave, stop for a moment wherever you are standing. Feel the wind and notice which way the sand moves at your feet. Look at the pines and remember that many of them were planted to hold this land together. Listen again for the two waters — the loud sea and the quiet lagoon. This whole landscape stays here because people keep looking after it, and it changes a little with every gust. As you walk away, take care on the paths, and let the dunes keep moving in their own slow way.