The most mysterious attraction curonian spit – dancing forest- located on its 37th kilometer, between the village Fishing(former Rossiten) and tourist route "The Height of Eph". The mentioned forest was planted on the slopes and top of the Round Dune (German Runderberg) in 1961 in order to strengthen its sands. Since the middle of the last century, the forest has grown and turned into one of the most mysterious and inexplicable natural phenomena of our country, whose secret scientists with the loudest names in the world have not yet been able to clearly explain. Birds do not sing here, there are almost no animals, and some unknown force bent the trunks of trees in the most bizarre forms. Yes, and many people, getting here, feel unusual: someone has an inexplicable surge of energy, and someone begins to complain about headache.

They say that "architecture is music frozen in stone." If we try to transfer this statement to botany, then in The dancing forest at first, there is a feeling that someone abruptly turned off the music in the midst of a crazy disco. Trees dance "who is in what much": then they are bent by waves

They twist into a ring

And the most advanced "dancers" try to portray themselves as a spiral


Moreover, the deeper you go deeper into the forest, the more “furious” the crazy dance of the trees becomes:

First, among the quite ordinary "brothers", the eye comes across individual slightly twisted pines

Then more and more of them

At the same time, the intensity of their “dance passions” is growing:

And all this happens in a ringing, almost mystical silence. True, it is not fully allowed to enjoy the noisy tourists, of whom the route "Dancing Forest" transported by bus from Kaliningrad.

And, interestingly, the vast majority of trees on the Round Dune have a quite ordinary “correct” shape - and only in a small area of ​​it, all the pines as one underwent a strange and inexplicable deformation. For many years, scientists have been wondering - what is the reason for these curvatures? And why only here?

On the this moment there are several main versions, but none of them has yet been officially confirmed and none is recognized as the main one. So, some experts are inclined to natural factors as the cause of the curvature of trees - that is, some unique combinations of wind, temperature changes and soil features in this particular section of the Curonian Spit. Others tend to blame unknown insect pests or even hitherto undiscovered viruses. For example, the version about the activity of caterpillars of the “wintering shoot” butterfly looks the most plausible - it seems to be cold in winter, there is nothing to do and it gnaws wood out of harm. Scientists say that this shoot damages pine shoots by eating mainly apical and, to a lesser extent, lateral buds. After the apical bud has been eaten, the tree begins to use the side bud instead of the main bud - and as a result, with the further growth of the tree, the trunk is deformed. The optimal food for a harmful insect is young pine trees, especially those that grow on soils with a lack of groundwater and poor nutrients. According to the researchers, such conditions exist on the Curonian Spit. However, this slender version cannot explain the strange food selectivity of the shoots - for some reason it damaged all the trees in a small, almost square area of ​​​​a vast pine forest, while not affecting the rest.

There is also a “geological” version: according to it, the causes of the curvature of tree trunks must be sought in the mobility of the sands. Unlike the other dunes of the Curonian Spit, the dune Kruglyaya is located on a kind of "cushion" of clay - and this, perhaps, explains its about Greater mobility than other dunes. The changing angle of the dune, combined with constantly blowing winds from the sea, could affect the growth of young pines. That is, they seemed to want to grow normally, but the sand and wind constantly forced them to dodge. After reaching a certain age, the trees were already quite firmly "standing on the roots" and could afford to grow evenly:

Many trees in the Dancing Forest only meander near the ground, but grow normally above.

There is also a “chemical” version - and it is connected with the fact that there is a famous German glider school in the area - they say, the Germans are always chemically doing something and poisoned everything around. By the way, local mushroom pickers prefer to stay away from of the dancing forest away.

The school, by the way, really was here until the end of World War II. Today, from the glider school, founded in 1922 in Rossitene(now a village Fishing) and once the center of German gliding, only part of the foundation remains. After the defeat in the First World War, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forbidden to have its own military aviation and schools for the training of military pilots. Under these conditions, the only place where you could get a "ticket to the sky" was gliding schools. The one that was located approximately on the site of the current of the dancing forest, by 1936 it became so famous that it received imperial status - during its existence until 1945, about 30 thousand pilots left it, among which there were many different champions: in flight range, in duration, etc. By the way, the last flight at the school took place on January 18, 1945, a few days before the Soviet troops entered the Curonian Spit.

Information boards installed at the very beginning of the Dancing Forest tourist route tell about the school and its aces glider pilots.

There are also boards with information about the Dancing forest and its most interesting features.

By the way, in the old days, on the site of the current Dancing Forest, ancient oaks and beech trees, which were considered sacred by the pagan tribes that inhabited the Baltic states and the Curonian Spit at that time, rustled. According to one version, the Christian missionary Wojciech Adalbert, whose name was later named the church in Zelenogradsk, was killed by the pagans precisely for their disrespectful attitude towards trees, expressed in violation of the boundaries of the sacred grove.

But back to the versions of the appearance of the Dancing Forest. The most popular among tourists and locals are mystical versions - it's understandable, it's much more interesting to think that the reason for the curvature of trees is a portal to a parallel world than some kind of virus. It’s also more pleasant for me to think about the portal or about some young witches who came to the Sabbath and for some reason, in the midst of the ritual dance, turned into twisting pines, than to be content with boring explanations about winds, soils and so on. A child lives in each of us - and he loves fairy tales, especially when the rest of life is filled with boring prose. For example, as soon as someone came up with a legend that if you climb inside the spiral of one of the dancing trees, then the life span will increase by a whole year - and completely adult respectable people began to climb the unfortunate tree, peeling off its bark with their flabby and hungry rejuvenation bodies, and in all seriousness calculate how many years they have already acquired and how much they still need to climb here to consolidate the rejuvenating effect.

It is from such visitors that some especially interesting trees surrounded by wooden fences

and the tourist trail was directed along special wooden decks, along which signs are installed in abundance, prohibiting them from getting off and touching the trees.

However, when did these bans stop Russian tourists? Some visitors before the trip, as usual, "take on the chest" and, remembering their distant ancestors and spitting on the calls of environmentalists, begin to climb trees in search of the most successful angle for a photo. So if you see a person sitting on a “dancing” tree on the Internet, you should know that this is one of them. According to scientists, if guests continue to climb trees and trample the soil around them, then in a few years only photographs will remain of the unique dancing forest.

So, returning to the topic of mystical versions of the origin of the Dancing Forest. The main one suggests the presence in a small area of ​​​​the Round Dune of a place with the strongest energy that has not yet been studied by science, which is the reason for the deformation of trees and strange changes in the well-being of many people (I personally, by the way, did not feel anything special there). The version already mentioned about a certain portal to a parallel world (the trees, apparently, were distorted from what they saw "on the other side" of horror) or to some worlds like Hindu "lokas" - that is, places where souls can enter only after death in the process of reincarnation. And here, on the Curonian Spit, different worlds somehow come together, creating side effects that are inexplicable to our science.

As expected, the Dancing Forest has its own legend:

A long time ago, the young Prussian prince Barty hunted in these places. In the midst of the hunt, he heard a charming melody and went to the sound. And in the forest glade he saw a beautiful girl playing the lyre. Young people fell in love with each other at first sight, but the girl did not want to marry the prince until he converted to Christianity. In order to show the pagan the power of the Cross, the girl made the trees in the meadow dance with her music.

It is not known how the matter ended - whether they “married, lived a long time and died on the same day”, or Bartius (which, from my point of view, is more likely) soberly assessed the prospect of having as his wife one that can even make the trees dance under his tune, and retreated. However, this is nothing more than a beautiful legend - for the simple reason that during the time of the pagan Prussians there was no Dancing Forest on the Curonian Spit.

Naturally, all kinds of ufologists could not ignore such a fertile topic - they say, if not the "alien base", then at least their "transfer station", at the thinnest tip - the crash site of their starship.

Be that as it may, none of the mentioned versions of the origin of the Dancing Forest on the Curonian Spit is recognized as dominant - and this is good, because everyone can choose the one that is closer to him and enjoy the view unusual forest combined with an interesting version of its origin.

As an experiment in 2006, young pine trees were planted in the "anomalous square" - scientists wanted to see how they would behave. Ten years have passed, the trees do not seem to squirm, but they grow extremely slowly, as if something is stopping them ...

How to get to the Curonian Spit and the Dancing Forest

By car: coordinates for navigator N55°11.034’ E20°51.261’.

In addition to traditional and well-known tools such as Booking or Hotellook, recent times new online services have appeared that greatly facilitate the life of the traveler and pleasantly protect the thickness of his wallet. One of them - roomguru I use it all the time and recommend it to all my friends and family. This service compares prices for an object in 30 booking systems at once, and offers you the most interesting options. In addition, it tracks discounts and special offers.

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Unforgettable impressions of the Dancing Forest and the Curonian Spit!
Your Roman Mironenko

Have you always thought that only a person can be drunk? Well, or, in extreme cases, elephants and giraffes, who were smart enough to taste overripe fermented fruits? But no! It turns out that trees can also stagger from side to side, bend intricately and even tie into a knot. True, science is not always able to explain what made the trees "drunk" and behave in an inappropriate way...

Subarctic drunk forests

Let's start simple. "Drunken Forest" as an official term does exist. And it applies to forests with incredibly inclined and suspiciously curved tree trunks, usually black spruce and larch. These trees are so common in the north of Alaska and the Siberian taiga precisely because others simply cannot survive here: there is permafrost two or three meters under the soil layer, which does not allow roots to grow. Conifers, on the other hand, have a developed root system, located close to the surface of the earth.

However global warming does not doze off, the temperature at the poles is growing, and the permafrost is still imperceptibly, but very decisively, melting. The ice under the soil layer becomes slippery, and the melt water is absorbed into the soil and turns it into mud. And since the surface of the earth is not perfectly flat, a certain moment all this "beauty" just slides down the slopes - along with the roots of trees. Losing balance, they usually bend, and the tops subsequently grow strictly vertically.

Thus, the trees take strange poses, but this can still be considered luck: sometimes as a result of such degradation of the landscape, they fall and die. In dendrochronology, when studying growth rings it is possible to establish when the tree tilted and, consequently, the degradation of the permafrost began. Drunken forests can also appear as a result of ordinary landslides (for example, in the Volga Valley). In any case, when erecting buildings and structures, roads and pipelines, the first thing to pay attention to is the presence of a drunken forest, as this indicates deformation of the soil.

Crooked Forest in Poland

In the west of Poland, near the town of Gryfino, there is an amazing forest. In a small area grow 400 curved pines - and all, as one, are facing north. The strange forest, planted back in 1930, has become a real tourist attraction - but no one can say for sure what the origin of this phenomenon is.

According to one version, the rust fungus Melampsora pinitorqua, which causes deformation of young pine shoots, became the cause of tree deformation. However, in fairness, it must be admitted that usually this fungus does not cause such pronounced curvatures.

Another version says that young trees sank down under the influence of strong winds, and then began to rise again. However, this version does not stand up to scrutiny, since neighboring trees of that age look quite normal.

There is also an opinion that the local breeder wanted to grow a forest where no one could get lost, so all the trees are turned to the north. On the other hand, there are many more simple ways"Don't get lost in the three pines" - why was such a waste of energy needed?

According to the old-timers, these pine trees were specially bent by someone in order to get bent wood, which was to be used in the construction of ships. The past use of various technical means to artificially deform tree trunks is widely documented in many European countries, which could make this version more likely. However, doubts arise, since the wood of this variety has never been used for the construction of ships.

Someone is convinced that the trees were twisted on purpose, but not for shipbuilding, but for making furniture. However, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany allegedly prevented this project from being carried out to completion. Further formation of trees was stopped, and they, no longer controlled by anyone, continued to grow freely upwards.

"Dancing Forest" in Kaliningrad

By the way, not only in Poland, but also in many other countries there are similar forests of unknown origin - in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Russia ... The last option is worth dwelling on - at least for the sake of interesting theories that have not yet been voiced.

The counterpart of the Polish Crooked Forest is located in national park The "Curonian Spit" is a narrow strip of land that connects the coast of the Russian Kaliningrad region and Lithuania. The trees here grow in a special way, "in a drunken way." Pine trunks have a very bizarre shape, some even twist in a spiral. As if some invisible force twists the trunks. The locals even call this place "the dancing forest".

Many have tried to explain what really happened here. According to one version, the pines acquired such a curved shape due to a large number snow, which crushed young immature trees to the ground during one of the snowy winters at the dawn of their "youth". But this explanation immediately becomes untenable if you look at absolutely straight pine trees of the same age growing around.

The same can be said about the belief among the local population that during the Second World War, young pine trees were crushed by tanks that drove here fighting. Heavy equipment would most likely just break tree trunks. Yes, and the tanks could not leave behind a “patch” of a drunken forest instead of a long alley. Did they go around in circles?

Not without ufologists: they immediately put forward a version that the green men were personally involved in bending the trees, that they have a base nearby and the trees are a kind of identification marks.

"Grove of drunken birches" in the Devil's Den

In Russia, on the border of Saratov and Volgograd regions, not far from the city of Zhirnovsk there is a strange place, nicknamed by the local residents as the "Devil's Lair" - mysterious and frightening events take place here every now and then. Here is the anomalous "grove of drunken birches". It looks like a hundred trees have long been covered with a large heavy lid. And they, bent over, began to creep along the ground and wrap themselves around each other like giant creepers.

Many of the trees are burned from below. As if from under the ground, from under the roots, they were scorched by fire. And no wonder: measurements of the radiation background here always show a three-fold excess of the norm. Perhaps the reason lies in the radon sources. That's why people avoid this place.

However, in addition to radiation, something inexplicable is still happening here. Locals claim that if you linger in the Devil's Lair until dark, then you will not find your way back until morning - although the area is open and flat. And plowing the land, even with sober drivers, no matter how hard you try, you can’t get an even furrow: continuous zigzags.

But there is in Russia and another excessively curly Birch Grove Not scary and not mystical at all. It is located in the Khibiny (the largest mountain range on the Kola Peninsula) on the border of the forest opposite the Kukisvumchor pass. The pass is conditional - a kind of 10-kilometer pipe between two ridges, where in autumn storm winds. Winter here can begin at the end of August and pour snowdrifts up to three meters. It looks like the tops of the young birch trees are freezing, and the side branches are beginning to grow stronger. And so, for several years in a row, invisible papillots are twisted ... You can’t call it the “Dancing Grove” otherwise!

Alley of memorial trees in Sri Lanka

The Royal Botanic Gardens was founded in 1821 on the banks of the major river Sri Lanka - Mahaweli. One of the features of the park is its ancient history: the first mention of it dates back to 1371. Here you can find another strange example of "drunk" trees - this time the Himalayan firs.

All these trees have been planted famous people visiting the Botanical Garden. Ours were there too. In 1891, Emperor Nicholas II planted the Iron Tree. There is also a tree planted by Yuri Gagarin. Yes, but how to understand what made them bizarrely bend, creating a feeling of distorted space?

The employees of the botanical garden answer the questions of tourists like this: the roots of these trees are very fond of termites. The trees themselves do not like this, and they try to somehow "escape" from them, growing in one direction or the other. The theory is funny, but completely implausible ...

"Dancing Forest" or as it is also called "Drunken Forest" is located in the Kaliningrad region in the national park "Curonian Spit". The Curonian Spit is a sandy spit located on the coast of the Curonian Lagoon and Baltic Sea. The Curonian Spit is a narrow and long strip of land shaped like a saber and separatingBaltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon.

The Curonian Spit stretches from the city of Zelenogradsk, which is located in the Kaliningrad region, to the city of Klaipeda, which is located in Lithuania. The spit got its name from the name of the ancient tribes of the Curonians who lived there before the colonization of Prussia by the Germans.

The “Dancing Forest” is a very amazing and unique natural phenomenon, as the pine trees in this forest bend in bizarre zigzags, as if dancing.

This unique forest was planted in the 1960s. Pine trees throughout the forest have the usual shape and only in a small area, tree trunks writhe and twist in bizarre spirals and even twist into rings.

It is also very interesting that there is a clear boundary between the trees we are used to and the trees twisted into a loop. Why do the trees in this place grow like this in an interesting way science does not know for sure, but there are suggestions that the cause of the curvature may be genetic characteristics, various natural factors, the effects of viruses or insect pests, or the special cosmic energy of this piece of land.

One way or another, the mystery of the "Dancing Forest" has not yet been revealed, and the mystery of the amazing forest annually attracts many tourists to the Curonian Spit.

For the first hundreds of meters from the road, the forest seems completely ordinary. As they say in the novels, "nothing foreshadowed" ...

At first, few people pay attention to the fact that the pines begin to bend:

Lonely strange trees appear, then there are more and more of them ...

Some force begins to twist the trees:

And the deeper you go into the forest, the more this strange property manifests itself:

Psychics, having felt a strong energy field, refuse to go further. Only reach the "epicenter" ordinary people. Some of them get a severe headache and fatigue, while others get a boost of energy for the whole day.

Any other similar place would have had time to acquire dozens of legends.

You would be told about a prince and a common girl, young witches, or just two lovers.

They would surely die and turn into dancing trees in the place where the ring was lost, the suicide occurred, the oath of allegiance was given, or the wrong spell was uttered during the witch dance.

These trees were planted to strengthen the sands of the Curonian Spit only in 1961. The legends have yet to be born. At first, no one paid attention to the strange growth of young pines. Years later, the anomaly became apparent...

Something inexplicable is tormenting the trunks, the trees seem to be writhing in pain.

Pines curl into spirals, twist into rings and break, changing growth in completely unexpected directions:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When erecting buildings and structures, roads, pipelines, attention should be paid to the presence of a drunken forest, as this indicates the deformation of soils. The appearance of tree slope in permafrost zones indicates the beginning of its degradation [ ] . At the end and beginning of the 21st century, areas of drunken forest appeared, in particular, in some regions of Siberia and Alaska.

Sometimes, as a result of the degradation of permafrost, the death of trees occurs. The trees of the drunken forest, as a rule, are curved, because when the soil slides, the trunks bend, and the tops become vertical with further growth. In dendrochronology, when studying tree rings, it is possible to establish when the tree tilted, and, consequently, the degradation of permafrost began.

see also

Write a review on the article "Drunken Forest"

Links

• drunk forest- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
• Ned Rozell.(English) . Alaska Science Forum. en: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community (September 21, 1995). Retrieved November 11, 2011. .
• . Geographic dictionary. Ecological Center "Ecosystem", A. S. Bogolyubov (2001-2011). Retrieved November 11, 2011. .

An excerpt characterizing the Drunken Forest

Don't talk to me like that, I'm not worth it! Natasha screamed and wanted to leave the room, but Pierre held her by the hand. He knew he needed something else to tell her. But when he said this, he was surprised at his own words.
“Stop, stop, your whole life is ahead of you,” he told her.
- For me? Not! Everything is gone for me,” she said with shame and self-abasement.
- Everything is lost? he repeated. - If I were not me, but the most beautiful, smartest and best person in the world, and if I were free, I would this minute on my knees ask for your hand and your love.
Natasha, for the first time after many days, wept with tears of gratitude and tenderness, and looking at Pierre left the room.
Pierre, too, after her, almost ran out into the anteroom, holding back the tears of emotion and happiness that were crushing his throat, put on a fur coat without falling into the sleeves and got into the sleigh.
“Now where are you going?” asked the coachman.
"Where? Pierre asked himself. Where can you go now? Really in a club or guests? All people seemed so pathetic, so poor in comparison with the feeling of tenderness and love that he experienced; in comparison with that softened, grateful look with which she last looked at him through tears.
“Home,” said Pierre, despite ten degrees of frost, opening a bearskin coat on his wide, joyfully breathing chest.
It was cold and clear. Above the dirty, half-dark streets, above the black roofs stood a dark, starry sky. Pierre, only looking at the sky, did not feel the insulting baseness of everything earthly in comparison with the height at which his soul was. At the entrance to the Arbat Square, a huge expanse of starry dark sky opened up to Pierre's eyes. Almost in the middle of this sky above Prechistensky Boulevard, surrounded, sprinkled on all sides with stars, but differing from all in proximity to the earth, white light, and a long tail raised up, stood a huge bright comet of 1812, the same comet that foreshadowed as they said, all sorts of horrors and the end of the world. But in Pierre, this bright star with a long radiant tail did not arouse any terrible feeling. Opposite, Pierre joyfully, with eyes wet with tears, looked at this bright star, which, as if, having flown immeasurable spaces along a parabolic line with inexpressible speed, suddenly, like an arrow piercing the ground, slammed here into one place it had chosen, in the black sky, and stopped, vigorously lifting her tail up, shining and playing with her white light among countless other twinkling stars. It seemed to Pierre that this star fully corresponded to what was in his blossoming towards a new life, softened and encouraged soul.

From the end of 1811, increased armament and concentration of forces in Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces - millions of people (including those who transported and fed the army) moved from West to East, to the borders of Russia, to which in exactly the same way since 1811 th year, the forces of Russia were drawn together. On June 12, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and the war began, that is, the opposite happened human mind and all human nature an event. Millions of people have committed against each other such countless atrocities, deceptions, treason, theft, forgery and issuance of false banknotes, robberies, arson and murders, which for centuries will not be collected by the chronicle of all the courts of the world and which, in this period of time, people those who committed them were not looked upon as crimes.

Is that most tree warps come directly from the ground. And, as described earlier, sometimes it is impossible to detect the place of a change in the direction of development of trees.

It seems as if the trees initially began to grow parallel to the ground, gradually restoring their usual vertical development. In some places, a place of change in the growth of trees protruding from the ground naturally attracted attention and required a detailed study. Having studied it from different trees, some features were found in the form of growths overgrown with bark. And in some places something similar to the root system, but developing in an unusual plane. Not only in pines, but also in similar abnormally developed birches.

Base of curved birch. A full photo of this dancing birch was posted earlier.

The full picture of the phenomenon began to emerge more and more clearly. All previous observations formed a clear mosaic. To confirm everything, it was necessary to dig out the base and root of one of these trees. The soil seemed to be conducive to this - sandy. The matter became controversial, especially after the rotten fire shovel was restored from the nearby fire-fighting stand, which turned up so well. The desire to get to the bottom of the truth and the easily succumbing soil, the latter also fit well into the alleged picture of the phenomenon, warmed up the work. Particularly environmentally friendly natures, I want to warn you that for these purposes an already sawn tree was chosen, of which there were many in the district. Although initially it was supposed to choose a dead tree for cuts, it was not even necessary to do this. In less than ten minutes, the root of the tree in one hand was freed from a solid mass of sand and appeared in its "original" form.

Video of the excavated base and root system of the Dancing Forest tree.

Here it is - the "root" of all the reasons for the unusual growth of most of the trees of the Dancing Forest in the Ryazan region. As it became clear from the video and photo, judging by the development, once the tree was completely felled, probably strong wind. The root system was almost completely turned out. After that, the pine, despite such unfavorable conditions, continued the struggle for existence, solving the problem with improvised abilities. Pine trees are generally very tenacious. Some of the roots died off, forming those very growths, some began to take root as best they could, i.e. went perpendicular to the ground. And one lateral root, left in such unreliable soil after the fall of the tree, perhaps following the same behavior as the lateral branches of the tree when the main trunk was lost, began to develop as the main one. Most pine species have a heterorhizome root system, including long and short roots.

That is, the roots began to actively develop, simultaneously compensating for the main tree trunk growing in a difficult position. As a result, the roots developed into the balance of a fallen tree, balancing the main trunk tending to an upright position. You can even notice that the tree split at the root during the blockage or later. Thus, the growth and behavior of the tree were, in fact, the most normal, and not abnormal! Abnormal were the conditions in which the tree turned out. But, as you know, "trees grow on stones."

Additional evidence, to the picture of the phenomenon described above, can also be attributed to the general friability of the soil - it dug very easily, like sand on a beach. The sparseness of the soil in the places of furrows, and vice versa, the greater density in the places of dumps, as was written earlier. And also the fact that the planting of trees took place artificially, most likely by seedlings, and not by sowing. It is possible that the landing was carried out mechanically.

Tree planter 1950s. Young plantings of pine.

Naturally, in the forest there were single plants with other types of damage, which can be attributed to some of the other previously described versions of the anomalous development of trees. And partly to the same type of impact, only manifested in a different nature of damage.