Durmitor National Park

I drove up from the coast on a September afternoon, watching the road climb through olive groves and then scrub forest and then pine so thick the light through the canopy went green. Žabljak, the main village in Durmitor, sits at fourteen hundred meters and reminded me of a ski town wearing its summer clothes — hiking equipment in the shop windows instead of skis, but the same slightly provisional feeling of a place organized around people passing through. I checked into a guesthouse, ate something forgettable, and the next morning walked to the Black Lake before the other guests were awake.

Crno Jezero — the Black Lake — is genuinely black in the early morning. Or rather, it’s the color of the pine forest reflected perfectly in water that has no current. Two lakes connected by a narrow channel, surrounded by conifers that smell of cold resin, with the karst faces of the Durmitor massif rising behind. I walked the circumference path alone in about forty minutes, the only sound the knock of my boots on the wooden boardwalk sections and, once, something large moving in the forest that I chose not to investigate further. By eight in the morning, a few other hikers arrived and the spell was only slightly broken.

The mountains here are serious. Bobotov Kuk, the highest point at 2523 meters, is a full-day ascent from Žabljak requiring no technical equipment but considerable fitness and the right weather. I made it halfway on my second day before the clouds came down fast and completely — the kind of mountain mist that eliminates landmarks and makes prudence feel like wisdom. Coming back down through the fog I found wild blueberries on the lower slopes and ate enough of them to stain my fingers dark purple. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

The Tara Canyon is visible from the park’s northern edge where the limestone drops away into the gorge. At the Đurđevića Tara Bridge — a slender span built by Italian engineers, one of them blew up his own bridge to slow the German advance in 1942 — you can look down into a forest that looks like green carpet, the river invisible in the shadow far below. The depth of the place is something the mind resists accepting even when confronted with it directly.

When to go: July and August for hiking in its fullest range, though these months see the most visitors around Žabljak and the Black Lake. September is my preference — cooler, the crowds thin considerably, the light has a quality that makes the limestone glow amber, and the first freeze hasn’t yet shut the higher trails. The ski season runs roughly December through March, with Žabljak keeping a genuine mountain-village atmosphere even in peak winter.