Bieszczady

The Bieszczady are Poland's far corner — the wedge of flysch ridges pressed between Slovakia and Ukraine where the Carpathians make their eastward turn. The signature is the połonina: long, treeless ridge-top meadows of mat-grass and blueberry that begin where the beech forest gives out around 1150 metres, an East Carpathian phenomenon that reaches its western limit exactly here. Połonina Wetlińska and Połonina Caryńska run like green causeways above the forest, and the range tops out on Tarnica at 1346 metres, its summit cross visible half a province away. The national park dates from 1973 and has been enlarged repeatedly since.

The emptiness that makes the Bieszczady feel Alaskan has a precise and unhappy date. In 1947 Operation Vistula deported the valleys' Boyko and Lemko inhabitants, and dozens of villages simply stopped; the forest closed over fields within a generation. Walk any side valley and the traces surface — cellar pits under nettles, feral apple and plum orchards, avenues of limes leading nowhere, stone crosses leaning at former crossroads, the footprint of a burnt cerkiew. The park's wilderness is second growth over grief, and knowing it changes how the silence reads.

Emptied valleys became carnivore country. The park and its buffer forests hold Poland's densest brown bear population, several wolf packs and a solid lynx presence, along with red deer whose September roar fills the valleys. European bison, reintroduced to the region from 1963, now form the largest herd in the whole Carpathian arc — several hundred head wintering in the San valley forests. With Slovak and Ukrainian ranges adjoining, the whole massif functions as one ecosystem, recognised as UNESCO's three-country East Carpathians biosphere reserve.

What's worth knowing before you go

Everything hangs off the Wielka Obwodnica, the big loop road, with Ustrzyki Górne and Wetlina as the two walking bases — reached by seasonal buses from Sanok (rail to nearby Zagórz). The classic days are Wetlina up Połonina Wetlińska past the stone-rebuilt Chatka Puchatka refuge, and Wołosate to Tarnica; paths are well marked but exposed, and summer thunderstorms on the połoniny are genuinely dangerous, so start early.

Late June brings the meadows into flower; the second half of October turns the beech forests to copper under first summit snow, which is the photograph everyone is trying to take. Winter closes most routes to all but the experienced. The connoisseur's reason to stay overnight is straight up: this is Poland's certified dark-sky country, and on a moonless night from the Obwodnica lay-bys the Milky Way casts shadow — the finest sky between the Alps and Scandinavia.