A deep, primal growl causes my head to snap upwards. I am caught off-guard by the angry purple shadow, which has suddenly materialised above me. The roaring reverberates, bouncing from giant sand mounds to the grey ocean swell, to the tall, green pines in the distance. Seconds later, a white flash appears in my periphery. Out in the open and exposed to the elements, I think that this is a less than ideal time for a thunderstorm. Ahead, a wooden signpost informs me I have reached ‘Death Valley’. My phone, which lost reception shortly after I left my lagoon-side hostel in Nida, buzzes to life with a double beep to tell me I’ve received a text message. It is my service provider welcoming me to Russia. I am more lost than I thought.
I’m scaling the back of the mighty Parnadis sand dune on the Curonian Spit; a sandy, wooded land mass and UNESCO heritage site nestled in the shallows of the Baltic Sea. The Spit stretches for 98km long and, with a width of 3.8km at its thickest, forms an elongated shape running parallel to the coastline of mainland Lithuania. The southern part of the Spit is Russia’s westernmost point, Kaliningrad, now isolated amongst the independent states of Eastern Europe. Long before this game of thrones began, the Spit was born of the sea and winds, though there is another origin story; an oral history past down by fisherfolk. It is said the Parnadis dune was forged by Neringa, a kind and beautiful giantess who lived by the shores of the Lithuanian coast. An evil dragon was drawn to Neringa’s beauty and asked for her hand in marriage, but she refused. Furious at the rebuke, the jealous dragon stirred up storms from the sea to terrorise the local fishermen. Neringa responded by creating the sandy Spit between the sea and bay to keep the dragon away
Parnadis, the largest of the sand dunes at 52 meters high, has proved the greatest threat to the fishing communities of the Curonian Spit in recent times. Nida, now a sought after holiday village of coloured wooden houses, had to relocate its settlement in 1732 after the original location was covered in a thick layer of sand. Thereon after, humans have been trying to fend off Parnadis from encroaching on the lagoon towns. In the 18th century, local forester, Gottlieb Dovydas Kuvertas, and his son, Georgas Kuvertas, fought nature with nature by planting trees, creating the beautiful mountain pine forests which cover the island, and introduced branch barriers to catch Parnadis in its tracks. The vegetation atop Parnadis suggest this was a success. When dunes come to a complete halt and lie dormant, they overgrow with sandy plants, sprouting yellow petals like downy newborn hair.
From the shelter of the pinewoods, I look out across the vast sea of sand and imagine Neringa shaping the moonscape of mounds with cupped palms, as unsuspecting as a child building a fort.
