The Perkun Oak

This oak is named after a god of thunder. Perkun, or Perkunas, was the thunder god of the Baltic peoples of these forests, and by local telling the Prussians and Galindians held this tree sacred and left offerings at its foot. One source carries that story and nothing else corroborates it, so it stays a legend rather than a record. What is on the record is drier and still worth the walk. Nadlesnictwo Maskulinskie, the state forest district that manages this ground, lists the Perkun Oak on its own register of nature monuments, giving it legal protection alongside a neighbouring oak of about 300 years called Dab Dobko. It stands roughly 27 metres tall, and the hollow in its trunk is reported to be wide enough for several people to stand inside at once. Its age is given as 600 to 800 years by the single source that gives any age at all, a round span with no measurement behind it that we could check. It is repeated here as that source's claim rather than as a settled number. The tree sits beside the Sladami Galczynskiego trail, which follows the ground the poet Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski knew along Lake Nidzkie, a few kilometres from the forester's lodge at Pranie where he wrote. Free, open, and reached on foot or by car to the Orlik ranger's lodge.