I wake about 7.00 as light filters through the cherry tree that stands outside the window of our room. The morning is cool, and I would like to have more than the thin blanket available on the bed. A thicker blanket might keep me in bed longer; instead, I rise in the cool to take a warm shower and dress for hiking. We have poached eggs and ham on a lush pile of crepes for breakfast and then walk to a bus stop at the edge of the old part of town. Our plan is to take a bus to the ski resort of Poiana Brasov, which is sits at about 1000 meters elevation in the hills above Brasov, Romania, and then walk back on trails. The bus fills with people.
Rain begins soon after we leave the bus in Poiana Brasov. We huddle under a shelter at the bus stop to wait for the shower to end, but it does not. We put on raincoats and wander, looking for a trailhead. A sign directs us toward Brasov on a trail marked by a blue triangle in a white circle. The trail marks take us past hotels and vacant buildings. We pass the Lippizaner and Shetland pony corral and the Dracula Casino. At the edge of town, we enter woods. The trail is initially two-tracked, possibly an old wagon route, or maybe it was recently worn by four-wheeled ATVs, which appear to be popular in the mountains of Romania. Pools of rainwater stand in ruts of the trail.
We walk in a dense forest of beech and spruce that has a thick understorey of shrubs and smaller trees. Below the shrubs the ground cover appears to consist mostly of raspberry canes. A waist high lily similar to martagon lily has darkly spotted pink tepals. Two species of bellflowers of the genus Campanula are common along the trail. There is a wet, pink-flowered orchid that may be a red helleborine and also a pale mycotrophic orchid that lacks green tissue for photosynthesis. I smell a stinky mint that may be Stachys silvatica, the hedge woundwort.
We do not walk far before stopping to put on rain pants. The sky is solidly gray, and we anticipate that the rain will continue. Although there is thunder, this weather offers more dreary rain than violent storm. The trail grows progressively muddier as we descend, and I wonder whether we will be both wet and muddy if we continue down the steep slope that will lead to Brasov.
After perhaps a mile, the two tracks of the trail converge to a single track, and the vegetation that encroaches on it wets our shoes. The forest is sufficiently dense that little rain reaches us. I can feel the drops striking me, but most are probably drips from the trees rather than rain from the sky. My hair is moist and drops fall on my notebook. My raincoat is too hot—I am wetter from sweat beneath it than I am from rain outside of it. After I remove the raincoat, I relax and enjoy the forest and the rain.
We cross a small creek and walk northward along the side of a ridge. A group of mountain bikers pass us. Soon the trail turns eastward, where we follow a ridge. The forest thins. In the more widely spaced trees, we get wetter from the rain. The forest composition begins to transition from spruce to a short-needled pine that is mixed with tamarack at this lower elevation. Still, there are beeches as well as the odd oak and then maples.
The trail opens to a small meadow and descends again, steeply now, into forest as we walk to the northwest down the last, long slope into Brasov. The rain stops, and the woods go from a humid, gray light that rises, it seems, from the wet branches to yellow light that flows around the trees. The sinuous branches of the beeches seem to wriggle in the flood of light.
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