MYSTERIOUS BASQUE FORESTS ARE SO BEAUTIFUL NOW!

All forests are full of natural beauty. But the mysterious, seemingly-haunted forests in Basque country, with their spindly branches and spooky lighting, are extraordinary.

OSKAR ZAPIRAIN

Oskar Zapirain’s photographs of a foggy beech forest, located in Oiartzun, a town in the Gipuzkoa province, in the Basque region of northern Spain, are hauntingly beautiful.

Long-limbed beech trees stand tall, with sculpted branches forming Baroque silhouettes through the misty light, in heavy fog. Moss, with its warm green velvet and fur, coats everything from the ground up.

This forest sits within Aiako Harria Natural Park, located at the edge of the Pyrenees. The Aiako Harria massif towers over the town. Mount Pagoeta also looms 2,224 ft. over the province. Pagoeta means “beech place,” in Basque.

The beech branches in Oiartzun’s forests owe their dramatic shapes to a 16th century charcoal production method, known as “coppicing.” Rather than clear-cutting trees as modern charcoal producers do, the wood taken from these trees were harvested by pruning, so new shoots could continue to grow.

Over time, it produced trees with short trunks and long limbs, giving them a ghostly air.

Beyond the magnificence of these unusual trees, Zapirain was drawn to the uniform, flat, hazy lighting.

This beech forest is one of many forests in Basque country. A whopping 55% of the land is covered in forests, full of beech, oak, chestnut, and pine trees.

You can see more of Zapirain’s work here.

Read more about Beautiful Forests, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including Explore the Beauty of Forests in 10 Gorgeous New Books Now.