What a Primeval Forest Taught Me About Letting Go

I learned that the mountains measure time differently than the rest of us

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All I wanted that day, was not to be late. I had an hour and a half drive to the town of Perušić, Croatia on the highway, followed by another hour on mountain roads. But first, I had to pick up a fellow participant along the way. She didn’t want to be late either because we were meeting the rest of the group deep in the Velebit Mountains.

So we rushed through city streets and along the highway, but when we reached Perušić, a peaceful town surrounded by mountains, it somehow took our anxiety away, and probably our sense of responsibility too. We stopped for a coffee before heading into the hills.

Thanks to that, we arrived half an hour late.

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Everyone was already gathered in the meadow in front of the rancher’s house. I felt bad, but also secretly glad that we had stopped for coffee, because it gave us time to download the mountain maps for offline use. If we hadn’t, we probably would have gotten lost, and they would have had to organize a search party, since there was no phone signal or Wi-Fi in the mountains.

As it turned out, they weren’t just waiting for us, they were also waiting for the program to start. So, in a way, we arrived right on time. That’s what I told myself, but I still felt a bit guilty.

As time passed and nature took over, everyday worries slowly lost their grip. The rhythms of nature replaced the rules of ordinary life. Even the awkwardness of being the last to arrive faded away, as if it had never really mattered.

That wasn’t a conscious decision. It simply happened at altitude. Without realizing it, I slowly left my worries behind. The beauty around me must have carried them away. The warm earthy colors, the golden light, and the winding narrow roads opening onto breathtaking views of gentle hills, lifted the weight from my shoulders and eased the burden on my heart. It is done so gently you do not even notice it.

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It seems like the same thing happened among the rest of the twenty people, from lawyers, yoga teachers, and economists to mountain guides and music stars, who came to the mystical Velebit Mountains for the weekend. For two days, we became creatures of the wild. Or at least, that’s how it felt.

We were about to pick mushrooms and make dinner, which meant cleaning, cutting, cooking, and savoring them. But mushrooms can be deadly dangerous, so you either need to know everything about them or trust someone who does.

I was lucky enough to know a real mountain fairy.

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She is a real person, and her name is Mirna Milković. She grew up among the creatures of the forest, roaming the Velebit Mountains since childhood, and almost every day she and her mother would “pick their lunch.” Her mother founded the first mycological society in Zadar.

Mirna learned from her mother about mushrooms and medicinal and edible herbs. Later, she became a licensed mountain guide, alpinist, phyto-aromatherapist, and chemist.

So I trusted her knowledge and experience.

But I also knew something else: I will never become a mushroom picker myself.

I willingly gave up before I even tried to learn the skill. It seems to me that every edible mushroom has a deadly poisonous twin. Logic doesn’t work with mushrooms either. You might assume that the bright red mushroom with white spots looks poisonous, and you’d be right. That part is logical. But the yellow one, streaked with rotten green, is edible and delicious.

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Of course, there are always dangerous lookalikes that differ only in tiny details, grow in different places, or appear at different times.

For a long time, mushrooms were classified somewhere between plants and animals, but scientists have since placed them in their own separate kingdom. Some fungi can even move in search of a better habitat before settling down and behaving more like plants again. Who on earth does that?

They can also kill you, cripple you, or drive you mad.

So I gave up mushroom picking once and for all.

But I love eating them. They taste as though you are consuming the forest itself.

Then Mirna led us to Štirovača, a primeval forest reserve about 1,100 meters above sea level.

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“It is a forest untouched by human hands. People once believed that this misty forest, with its carpet of moss and humid climate, was magical and home to fairies. The government respected that belief and protected it as a Special Forest Vegetation Reserve in 1965. You can feel the atmosphere here. It makes you want to walk in silence.

There is a creek nearby, partly underground, and you may take one small rock that has never been touched by human hands. But don’t take more than one, because people still believe a curse follows anyone who disrespects the magic of this forest.”

So each of us took one lucky stone from the primeval forest, which truly felt enchanted.

I chose a smooth red one. I found it in the bed of a dried-up, disappearing creek. Many of Velebit’s streams and rivers disappear underground before reappearing elsewhere. That’s because Velebit is a limestone mountain range. Over time, water has intensely eroded the calcium carbonate that makes up most of its rocks, creating an extraordinary karst landscape filled with sinkholes, caves, and dramatic rock formations.

So this little stone had probably never been touched by human hands. Perhaps it had only recently been carried out by an underground stream after spending its entire existence hidden deep within the vast massif.

“Untouched by a human hand” sounds really cool, but now it is more like touched by one human’s hands.

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Velebit really is a magical mountain. It demands respect and takes care of its forests and all the creatures that live there.

One woman from our group tried to fly a drone to capture the ancient trees, but the forest had other plans. The drone went berserk, crashing into branches and refusing to stabilize.

Respectfully, she packed it away, unwilling to disturb the magic of a place that humanity had never truly damaged. She even apologized, since she understood the message: the forest is alive.

Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard proved that trees communicate underground through mycorrhizal networks. There are also mother trees, the oldest trees from which younger generations grow. They recognize their offspring and support them, adjusting their branches and roots to give them space and resources. Sometimes they even continue feeding the stump of a fallen tree to keep it alive, even though it can never truly grow again. It’s as if they are not ready to let go and say goodbye.

Mirna said this while showing us her favorite mother tree in Štirovača.

Please open this video to see the Štirovača mother tree with your own eyes. I recorded it and you just have to see its immense size and feel the enchantment of the primeval forest.. You can also see how thick the moss is on the trees, as well as the strangely shaped mushrooms that release spores when you touch them. I got spore dust all over my fingernails, and I didn’t think this one was edible.

We practiced Zen yoga in a sunny meadow, and right in front of us, Mirna made a natural lip balm and a chili cream for joints, sports injuries, muscle cramps, bruises, and sciatica, showing us exactly how to make them using natural ingredients.

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We had a tasty dinner made of the fruits of the forest. When night fell, a dog started barking wildly at something in the woods, so we all, one by one, moved closer to the fire. Velebit is home to large carnivores such as wolves, bears, and lynx, and you never know what original inhabitant might come out of the dark to say hello. The animal was wise and avoided humans.

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We slept in a mountain shelter deep in the dark woods, watching countless stars that only reveal themselves properly in the mountains, listening to the sounds of wildlife outside and a snoring man in the wooden shelter.

In the end, I was so deeply relieved by the time spent in nature, that the fact we were half an hour late, meant almost nothing. The mountains gave me something much greater than punctuality. I felt the weight fall away, and a calm sense that everything might be possible, settled in. I also realised how much of what I usually worry about, simply doesn’t matter. In the city, a half-hour delay can feel like huge disrespect for other people’s time. In the mountains, that kind of thinking dissolves. Different rules take over there where people are more connected, and presence matters more than time.

Does that mean time in the mountains runs differently, or that social norms don’t matter as much in wilderness?

Maybe the sense of time softens, and with it, the weight of social expectations fade.

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Thank you, JoAnn Ryan, for the July 2026 monthly challenge, “**Take Your Travel Photography Further.**” And thank you to the entire Globetrotters editing team Anne Bonfert, Michele Maize, Krasi Shapkarova and Brad Yonaka for your thoughtful editing and for helping make our writing better.

Special thanks to all the readers, 🤓

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